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L I D I 3tt. 

IN THE OLDEN TIME: 



OR, 



SKETCHES OF THE ENGLISH METROPOLIS, 



FROM ITS ORIGIN 



TO THE E:nD op THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



REVISED BY D. P. KIDDER. 



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PUBLISHED BY LAT^E & SCOTT, 

FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL 
CHUECH, 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 

JOSEPH LONG KING, PRINTER. 
1851. 



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SEMINARY LIBRARY. \ 



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EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



Great cities have always been the centres 
of great influence among men and nations. 

We have only to think of Nineveh, of 
Babylon, of Jerusalem, of Athens, of Rome, 
of Paris, and of London, to call up before 
our minds the great focal points around 
which the destinies of large portions of 
mankind have revolved in different ages of 
the world. 

Whatever may be said of the artificial 
life w^hich is led in cities ; however often it 
may be demonstrated that the attractions 
and moral influence of the country are su- 
perior, yet men wall continue to do as they 
have done hitherto. They will build cities, 
and rush into them in the pursuits of busi- 
ness, of pleasure, and of renown. 

Christians, therefore, should not be un- 
mindful of cities. Our Saviour was not. 
He devoted a large portion of his ministry 



KDITOR'S PREFACE. 



to the cities of Palestine. The apostles la- 
bored much in cities, and in them planted 
their principal churches. 

The constitution of society has greatly 
changed in modern days ; and while it be- 
comes Christians to see that the gospel is 
preached to every creature, and furnished 
to every part of the world that men inhabit, 
they are especially called upon to do all 
possible good to the millions that populate 
the cities of the globe. 

We make these remarks in this connec- 
tion, because we intend with this volume to 
commence a series of books on the princi- 
pal cities of modern times. 

London being one of the largest cities of 
the world, as well as one of the most in- 
fluential, will claim the space of two vol- 
umes like the present, which is from the 
press of the Rehgious Tract Society. 
Hereafter we shall publish a volume on 
Modern London. New- York, from the early 
times to the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, will soon be in readiness. 

New - YorTcj January, 1851. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. page 
Introduction 7 

I. Roman London 13 

n. Saxon London 35 

m. Norman London 60 

IV. London in the Fourteenth Century 86 

V. London in the Fifteenth Century 113 

VI. London at the Era of the Reformation 135 

Vil. London under Queen Elizabeth 181 

Conclusion 213 



LONDON 

IN THE OLDEN TIME. 



INTRODUCTION. 

London! What pictures does that name call 
up ! "When one, acquainted with its scenes, sits 
down in retirement and silence to meditate upon 
the great Enghsh Babel, what visions rise before 
the memory and imagination ! No panorama, 
no succession of dissolving views, can equal 
them. A city is seen, which encircles with its 
elastic and ever-stretching belt a population of 
two millions. Streets, squares, circles, crescents, 
lanes, alleys, and other avenues for traffic and 
places for abode, bearing names diversified and al- 
most numberless, spread their intersecting fibres, 
their complicated network, over its vast area. 
The silent highway of the Thames cuts in two 
this kingdom-like metropolis — exhibiting on its 
ever-flowing stream the ships of all nations, 
amidst a forest of masts bearing the British flag ; 



8 Lo^"DO^" in the olden time. 

lined on either side its waters with docks, and 
wharves, and stores, rich in the treasures of com- 
merce ; and spanned at short intervals by bridges 
of various and curious construction, across which 
unceasing crowds of beings are ever passing. 
Buildings of all sorts and styles of architecture, 
ancient and modern, appropriated to all kinds 
of purposes, good and bad ; the church, the 
chapel, the senate-house, the literary institute, 
the inns of court, the hospital, the hall, the shop, 
the villa, the theatre, the gin-palace, the cellar, 
the nests of lodgings, floor on floor, cluster 
strangely together, and are found in close neigh- 
borhood within the precincts of this great city, 
which forms an epitome, not of the nation only, 
but of the world. Here Ues wealth, and there 
poverty ; here grandeur, there abject wretched- 
ness ; here purity, there licentiousness ; here re- 
ligion, there impiety ; here life, there death ; re- 
minding one of the contrasts, though of a far 
difi'erent order, which meet the traveler over the 
Alps, where on one side of his path he can touch 
the chilling glacier, and on the other crop the 
beautiful rhododendron. Worlds on worlds, in- 
tellectual, moral, and religious, lie compressed 
within this metropolitan world ; modes of exist- 
ence, circles of life, distinct from each other, and 
hardly coming in contact. The religious world. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

the political world, the commercial world, the 
fashionable world, the literary world, the thea- 
trical world— all these worlds are found in Lon- 
don, revolving in their respective spheres, and 
some have so little to do with others, that what 
excites the most intense interest in the mind of 
this man is unknown to that man, as much so 
as if he were the inhabitant of another planet. 

London! What a scene of bustle, activity, 
eager pursuit, and conflict it is ! Men driving 
to and fro, each intent on his own purposes, and 
threading his path with an expressive eye, which 
reveals how much he is in earnest about his own 
affairs, and how little interest he has in those of 
the neighbors he passes by ; people making haste 
to be rich, and scrambling up the path to wealth 
with amazing agility and speed ; and others ever 
losing their foothold in the same difficult ascent, 
falling instead of mounting higher, and catching 
hold of this man's hand and that man's skirt, 
seizing on crag or twig, or anything to hang by, 
and after all tumbling down into ruin and pover- 
ty ; people panting after civic honors, or literary 
renown, or political distinction, or ecclesiastical 
preferment ; the votaries of pleasure, light and 
airy mortals, who, with a marvelous levity of 
thought and feeling, spend life as if they were 
birds or butterflies, intended by their Creator 



10 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

only to sing and sport away the few brief hours 
of their existence ; the slaves of vice, the bru- 
talized children of humanity, who disgrace their 
species, and get as near as they can to the mere 
animal, to the mere slug, sliming away then- 
being, and marking their progress through the 
world by the foul and offensive trail of their im- 
moralities — these all, and many more, are found 
in this great city. 

London by day ! What a thronged, and 
noisy, and hive-like place it is ! What an in- 
cessant flux and reflux of busy and bustling 
mortals! What an illustration of that Scrip- 
ture, in which the tumult of the people is com- 
pared to " the noise of the seas, the noise of the 
waves !'' How these human waters roll and 
roar along their dark and pent-up gullies ! How 
these streams, dashing along in different cur- 
rents, meet as it were in foaming conflict ! What 
toil of all kinds is going on from mom to eve ! 
What work for the muscle and the brain; for 
the hand and the head ; for the mind and the 
heart ! How every power is tasked to the ut- 
most ; every energy stretched almost to burst- 
ing ! What weary feet, what panting breath, 
what aching hands, what wornout minds, what 
exhausted feeling, what rest-craving, when the 
day is done ! 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

London by niglit, when the streets are empty 
and silent ; when the long hnes of lamps shine 
out so calmly on the quiet scene, presenting a 
mimic counterpart of the bright stars shining 
over the calm expanse of heaven ; when the pale 
moon looks down upon it, as if it were a city of 
the dead, save that now and then a stray foot- 
step or a solitary vehicle is heard ; when, with 
the exception of here and there scenes of plea- 
sure or of vice, instances of death or affliction, 
cases of sleepless anxiety or of prolonged study — 
the milhons of the population are asleep, their 
voices hushed, their senses closed, their minds 
unconscious, save of mysterious thoughts and 
feelings, which form to each one his own world 
then — worlds of dreams as numerous and dis- 
tinct as there are sleepers, when some are living 
over the day again, and others are picturing such 
days as they have never seen, and never will 
see ; when some are sinking in unreal sorrow, 
and others soaring in unreal joy. London by 
night is, to a mind which realizes the moral and 
spiritual spectacle, in some respects more inter- 
esting than London by day. 

But we must leave these musings on the pre- 
sent state of London, and address ourselves to 
the subject before us. It is proposed to exhibit 
sketches— not finished pictures, but sketches of 



12 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

London in the olden time ; to recall the memory 
of ancient things in the minds of those acquaint- 
ed with them ; and to impart ideas of them to 
those who have never studied the matter. The 
aim of the volume is to afford a descriptive ac- 
count of old London ; of the place, the buildings, 
the people, their customs and habits, their go- 
vernment and social life. The object is to go 
now and then beneath the surface, and strive to 
penetrate into the spirit of former times, and to 
detect principles at work below the frame of 
outer things, and to catch phases of humanity, 
which He deeper than men's costumes, forms of 
speech, and daily doings. And over the whole 
we are anxious to breathe a religious spirit ; to 
place facts and characters in such a light as will 
harmonize with the revelations of Holy Scripture, 
not forgetting, as opportunity may serve, to no- 
tice the great moral and spiritual relations of 
man, as already the subject of a higher govern- 
ment than that of earth, and destined to become 
the inhabitant of another and eternal world, 
when his citizenship in the present one shall 
have ended forever. 



ROMAN LONDON. 13 

CHAPTER I. 

ROMAN LONDON. 

For any one in the present London to form an 
idea of the state and appearance of the old city, 
at the beginning of its history, is no easy task. 
A metaphysical kind of identity is the only one 
which belongs to it. Like an old ship, it has 
been repaired and rebuilt, till not one of its ori- 
ginal timbers can be found. London in its early 
days — in the time of the Romans, for example — 
was as unlike what it now is, as the cities of old 
Gaul or Italy were unlike it. Streets, buildings, 
speech, customs — all vary. Could an old Ro- 
man, buried near St. Paul's, be raised to life, 
and were he to walk through Cheapside or down 
Ludgate Hill, what an utterly different place 
would the new London appear on which he 
opened his eyes, from the old London on which 
he closed them sixteen or seventeen centuries 
ago ! And if a Saxon or a Norman, or an in- 
habitant of the city in Elizabeth's time, could 
awake from his long sleep, he would be strangely 
puzzled to make out where he was, as much so 
as the reader would be, if, by some supernatural 
agency, he were carried away one night to India, 



14 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

to rise in tlie morning surrounded by the street 
scenery of Calcutta or Benares. 

The name London is used for what has been, 
in fact, a succession of cities, different from each 
other, including inhabitants in one age who 
would have been foreigners and barbarians to 
the inhabitants of another age. A very whim- 
sical conversation might be easily and justly 
conceived, as occurring between the Londoner 
of this day, and some forefather of his only a 
hundred years ago. He would stare with be- 
wildering amazement at things which are now 
matters of perfect familiarity. How a London 
merchant of George the Second's time would 
marvel at the idea of traveling by steam, and 
laugh with incredulity at the now every-day 
achievement, of leaving the Exchange at four 
o'clock in the afternoon, and reaching Manchester 
or Liverpool the same night ! Much more dis- 
tantly removed in point of ideas and association, 
would be our grave-looking ancestors some cen- 
turies earlier ; while a citizen of the times of the 
Plantagenets would have a perfectly foreign ap- 
pearance, dress, and speech, and be to his 
polished and highly civilized descendant as one 
little better than a barbarian. Go back to the 
time of the Conqueror, and everything becomes 
changed — costumes, manners, language, habi- 



ROMAN LONDON. l5 

tations, scenery shift, and give place to far dif- 
ferent appearances. In the Eoman age, still 
more startling differences are presented; not 
even the soil remains the same. The level of 
the site on which the city stood sank far lower 
than at present, and indications of Roman high- 
ways and floors of houses are found twenty feet 
below the existing pathways. 

Let the reader^ picture to himself the aspect 
of the place, now occupied by the great metro- 
poHs, as the Romans saw it on their first visit. 
He should imagine the counties of Kent and 
Essex, now divided by the Thames, partially 
overflowed in the vicinity of the river by an 
arm of the sea, so that a broad estuary comes 
up as far as Greenwich, and the waters spread 
on both sides, washing the foot of the Kentish 
uplands to the south, and finding a boundary to 
the north in the gently rising ground of Essex. 
The mouth of the river, properly speaking, was 
situated three or four miles from where London 
bridge now stands. Instead of being confined 
between banks, as at present, the river over- 
flowed extensive marshes, which lay both right 
and left beyond London. Sailing up the broad 
stream, the voyager would find the waters 
spreading far on either side of him, as he reached 
the spots now known as Chelsea and Batter- 



16 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

sea — a fact of which the record is preserved in 
these very names. A tract of land rises on the 
north side of the river. It is bounded on the 
west by a range of country, subject to inunda- 
tions, consisting of beds of rushes and osiers, and 
boggy grounds, and impenetrable thickets, in- 
tersected by streams. It is bounded on the 
north by a large dense forest, rising on the edge, 
of a vast fen or lake, covering the whole district 
now called Finsbury, and stretching away for 
miles beyond. This tract of land, rising in a 
broad knoll, formed the site of London. The 
name is most likely Celtic, and indicates that a 
town stood here before the arrival of the Ro- 
mans. DuUj or thuriy signifies the same as the 
Saxon towut and Lon, derived from Lhong, is the 
British name for ships. The town of ships, then, 
is the import of the now world-known word, 
which designates the capital of our island. In 
support of this origin of the appellation, which 
has given rise to great controversy, the worthy 
archaeologist Camden informs us, that London 
is called Lhong porth, or a harbour for ships, by 
one of the old Welsh bards. 

Geofifrey of Monmouth, who loves to deal in 
the marvelous describes the British city in the 
most extravagant terms. He calls it Lud's 
town, or the town of king Lud, a fabulous hero 



ROMAN LONDON. 17 

of Britain, and gravely informs us that it '' had 
a strong and stately wall, adorned with an in- 
finite number of towers, of curious workmanship, 
and containing public structures of all sorts." 
Putting aside all this ill-contrived fiction, the 
British town must be reduced to one of those 
rude settlements described by Caesar and Strabo 
as common in our island. An inclosure of mis- 
erable conical-shaped huts, like an African or 
Indian village, must the town so romantically 
depicted by Geoflfrey of Monmouth have been in 
reahty. There were a ditch and rampart round 
the inclosure, which included within it, beside 
the abodes for men, stables or stalls for cattle, 
for the Britons of the south were a pastoral peo- 
ple. The position of London, in the immediate 
neighborhood of marshy lands, would preclude 
the possibility of growing corn there ; otherwise 
agriculture might have been practised by the 
original dwellers in this spot, and the inclosure 
might have contained rude farming homesteads, 
inasmuch as the southern Britons were husband- 
men as well as graziers. 

A low grade of civilization was the utmost 
which the aborigines of England attained, pre- 
viously to their being brought under the influ- 
ence of Roman culture; but certainly it is an 
error to speak of them as mere savages. The 



18 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

types of this old Celtic race have been portrayed 
before us from our childhood, with naked, painted 
bodies, flowing hair, glaring eyes, and arms up- 
lifted with rude weapons, brandished in the air ; 
but it should be remembered, that it is only as 
they appeared to Caesar on his invasion of the 
coast, when, in Celtic fashion, they had flung oft' 
their garments to engage in war, that this de- 
scription is applied to them even by him ; and 
that we have his testimony, in addition, to this 
efiect — that the inland tribes, those least civilized, 
clothed themselves in skins, while the southern 
Britons, like the Gauls, dressed even in splendid 
attire. Planch (vol. i, p. 14) describes the cos- 
tume as not unlike, in its general fashion, the 
highland tartan of modern times. 

London, then, by day, presented a number of 
these Celtic people, engaged in their pastoral 
pursuits, or embarking and paddling on the river 
in coracles or wicker boats, to catch fish, or pre- 
paring for war, throwing off their plaids, and 
ascending with furious menaces the war- chariot, 
whose wheels were studded with sythelike 
spikes. London by night was a scene of rural 
quietude. The birds folded up their wings, the 
cattle lay down to sleep, and the Thames rolled 
on in silence, with the marshes around over- 
flowed with water, and the Britons slumbered 



ROMAN LONDON. 19 

and dreamed as we do, each one repairing to his 
own Httle world of memories and fancies. 

Such was London when the Romans first 
visited it. That visit seems to have been later 
than Caesar's invasion. He, according to the 
judgment of the most esteemed antiquaries, 
crossed the Thames near Chertsey, at a place 
called Coway Stakes ; and the only British town 
which he has particularly mentioned in his Com- 
mentaries, is the capital of Cassivellaunus, gene- 
rally identified as the Roman Yerulam, now St. 
Albans. The earliest reference to London is 
found in Tacitus, who speaks of it as a place of 
importance, but not as a colony. It had become 
a Roman station, but its first planting by the 
masters of the world, and how and why they 
transmuted the British town into one of their 
provincial cities, is a subject wrapped in impene- 
trable obscurity. The same historian informs us 
that London, at the time when Suetonius Pauli- 
nus, the Roman general, arrived here, which 
was in the year 64, contained a great number 
of merchants and plenty of merchandise. 

When the British Amazon queen, Boadicea, 
aroused her countrymen to a sense of their de- 
gradation as the slaves of Rome, and stimulated 
them to a desperate effort of resistance, London 
had become a very large Roman settlement ; but 



20 L02<D0N IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

being abandoned by the Latin general, for want 
of means of defending it, she assailed it without 
mercy, pillaged the place, and destroyed the in- 
habitants. Among the many terrific calamities 
of which this, like other cities, has been the sub- 
ject, the first of them on record is not the least 
shocking; not less than seventy thousand per- 
sons, according to the historian just named, 
perished in London and Yerulam — a statement 
which, even when some allowance is made for 
exaggeration, renders it probable that both these 
cities were populous at that period. Boadicea 
is said to have hanged the Roman w^omen naked, 
sewed up their mouths, pierced their bodies 
through with sharpened stakes, and committed 
other barbarities. All this, it has been con- 
ceived, was done in the midst of sacrifices and 
festivals in honor of the Celtic deities. The city 
was burned — in confirmation of which, it may be 
stated that tesselated pavements have been found, 
above W'hich are traces of fire, wood ashes lying 
a few inches thick, together with molten glass 
and red pottery, blackened by smoke ; then, on 
higher ground, are fragments of buildings, which 
seem to have been reared over ruins left by a 
former conflagration. 

London, probably, was not very long before 
it recovered from this early calamity. Its fa- 



ROMAN LONDON. 21 

vorable position on the banks of the Thames 
could not fail to recomraend it to the care of 
the Romans, and to induce them to accomplish 
its rebuilding. That river has been its friend 
from the beginning, and has ever brought it 
commerce and wealth to repay for its losses, 
and compensate for its misfortunes. Till it 
loses the old stream, it can never become irre- 
trievably impoverished, as the alderman very 
justly thought in Queen Mary's time, who, when 
he was told her majesty was greatly displeased 
with the citizens, and would remove the parlia- 
ment to Oxford, asked, "Does she mean to 
divert the river Thames from London or not ?" 
''Why, no," said the courtier. "Then,'' re- 
plied the other, " we shall do well enough at 
London whatever become of the parliament." 
That river became its friend in connection with 
the next incident which history records respect- 
ing London. In the year 297, a body of Franks 
fell upon the place, and began to plunder it, 
when the arrival of a part of the Roman fleet 
succored the inhabitants, and drove away the 
invaders. A second time the town was relieved 
through the great Theodosius, who discomfited 
its Scotch and Pictish enemies. Bands of these 
early troublers of the peace of the island were 
met by the Romans as they approached. The 



22 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

marauders were burdened with spoil, and were 
driving the prisoners they had taken as if they 
had been beasts. The Romans easily routed 
them, and forced them to deliver up both the 
booty and the captives. Theodosius remained 
some time in London, and, probably, included it 
among the cities and camps which Ammianus 
Marcellinus tells us he restored after the serious 
injuries they had suffered. 

This author states, that its old name had 
been London, but that in his time it received the 
appellation of Augusta. (Am. Marcel., xxvii, 8.) 
This was a title given to about seventy cities of 
the empire, which generally were the capitals 
of the countries in which they were situated. 
Hence it has been concluded, that the present 
metropolis had at that early period attained to 
the honor of precedence. However that might 
be, it had certainly reached the dignity of a 
colonia, which, as already noticed, it had not 
done in the time of Tacitus. A colonia, or colony, 
consisted of a number of Roman citizens, who 
were sent out by a decree of the senate, to oc- 
cupy some existing city, or to plant a new town 
in a country of which Rome had taken possession. 
The original inhabitants were not driven out, 
nor deprived of all their property, but were 
allowed to enjoy several municipal privileges, 



ROMAN LONDON. 23 

very inferior, however, to those of the emigrants 
from the great mother city, who were virtually 
masters and lords of this acquired territory. 
The government of the colony resembled that 
of Rome ; its laws were there administered, its 
worship established, its usages practised, its arts 
diffused ; in short, the dependent municipality 
was the image of the central and parent one. 
The aboriginal residents, who thus found them- 
selves subject to foreign masters, were not likely, 
in many cases, cordially or patiently to submit 
to this imposed authority, and, therefore, dis- 
satisfaction, a thorough want of sympathy, and 
annoyance at the pressure of the yoke existed, 
and was evinced in cases where open revolt did 
not take place. That London was a colony is 
an ascertained fact, and hence it may be re- 
garded as a city of the description just men- 
tioned ; but the spirit of the inhabitants with 
regard to their masters is a subject, like many 
others relating to that period, enveloped in im- 
penetrable darkness. 

The Romans occupied Britain six hundred 
years, a space which allowed them deeply to 
imprint on it the traces of their own civilization. 
Conjecture has been very busy with ancient 
London ; plans of it have appeared, and vision- 
ary romances composed regarding it. But, 



24 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

putting aside conjectures, there are plain evi- 
dences of the early extent of the Roman city, 
and indications also of its artistic state. The 
growth of it may be followed, and the bounda- 
ries measured. In the very heart of the present 
London, stretching along Watling-street, the 
grand Roman highway, from St. Paul's Church- 
yard to the Tower, we discover the primitive 
London, bounded on the south by the Thames, 
and on the north by a line which did not run 
far behind Guildhall. The old city seems to 
have been a parallelogram, intersected, probably, 
according to Roman fashion, with straight streets. 
Close to the outside of this line, about Good- 
manfields, Spitalfields, and Bishopsgate, and 
even in St. Paul's Churchyard, there have been 
discovered funeral urns, the sure signs of Roman 
burial-places. As these were always outside 
the boundaries of a city, (for the people of those 
days, wiser in this respect than their descend- 
ants in modern times, never thought of inter- 
mural interments,) the relics referred to prove 
satisfactorily that London, originally, must have 
been confined within the limits named. But 
afterwards it became much more extended. 
The Roman wall built at a later period incloses 
a considerably larger space. It takes in por- 
tions of the cemeteries; and runs from the Tower 



ROMAN LONDON. 25 

to Bisliopsgate, along what is still called London 
Wall to Fore-street, through Cripplegate Church- 
yard, thence through Monkwell-street and Cas- 
tle-street to Aldersgate-street, where, making 
an angle, it passes through Christ's Hospital 
and Ludgate down to the Thames, which it 
skirted all the way till it reached the Tower. 
The whole city was walled in, on the water side 
as well as the others. 

Marks of the growth of London in Eoman 
times were found at the beginning of the last 
century, when, on taking down some houses in 
Camomile-street, there were discovered, first a 
tesselated pavement, and four feet below it 
Roman urns in pottery, containing burned bones 
and ashes. Here the city must have pushed out 
its borders, and invaded the territories of death. 
The villa must have been reared over the sepul- 
chre. The living population must have so 
increased, as to be no longer able to remain 
within the old boimds. Proofs of a similar kind, 
establishing the same fact, might be easily mul- 
tiplied. When it is remembered that the Ro- 
mans were so many centuries in possession of 
the place, it is reasonable enough to believe 
that it must have undergone great alterations 
under their sway ; that Roman London was a 
different spot at different periods. Indeed, the 



26 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

curious fact has been established, that the 
original city was, in great part, superseded by a 
later one, built over it, and out of its ruins.* 
Beyond the civic boundaries, also, remains, ap- 
parently Roman, have been discovered. A 
vaulted passage in Strand-lane exhibits walls 
and pavement of brick and stucco, decidedly 
Roman in appearance ; and local tradition reports 
it to have been a bath, which is very probable. 
If so, here might stand a handsome villa, on the 
banks of the Thames, whither some colonist had 
transferred the comfort and luxuries of that 
civilization, which had found its seat and flour- 
ished with such pride on the banks of the Tiber. 
In Lower Thames-street, within the old city, an 
extensive edifice has been recently brought to 
light, which constituted either a private resi- 
dence with its own baths, or a small public 
establishment, equivalent, though on a smaller 
scale, to the thermae of ancient Rome, and very 
similar to those which have been excavated at 
Pompeii. (Archaeological Journal, vol. v, p. 25.) 
There were plainly here rooms, cisterns, and 
flues, for both cold and warm bathing — in- 
dulgences highly valued and very commonly 
enjoyed by the Roman people. 

* See article in the Archseologia on Roman London, by Mr. 
C. R. Smith. 



ROMAN LONDOK. 27 

That a bridge at that early age spanned the 
river is indicated by recent researches, as well 
as recorded by Dion Cassius, who lived in the 
third century. '' Throughout the entire line of 
the old bridge, the bed of the river was found 
to contain ancient wooden piles ; and when these 
piles, subsequently to the erection of the new 
bridge, were pulled up to deepen the channel 
of the river, many thousands of Eoman coins, 
with abundance of broken Roman tiles and pot- 
tery, were discovered ; and immediately beneath 
some of the central piles, brass medallions of 
Aurelius, Faustina, and Commodus. All these 
remains are indicative of a bridge." The depo- 
sition of coin in the substructure of edifices was 
a common practice, intended to perpetuate the 
memory of conquest and the preservation of 
art ; and these may have been placed under the 
bridge when first built, or afterwards repaired. 
'^The beautiful works of art which were dis- 
covered alongside the foundations of the old 
bridge, the colossal head of Adrian, the bronze 
images of Apollo, Mercury, Atys, and other 
divinities ; an extraordinary instrument, orna- 
mented with the heads of deities and animals, 
and other relics, bearing direct reference to 
pagan mythology, were possibly thrown into the 
river by the early Christians, in their zeal for 



28 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

obliterating all allusions to the old supplanted 
religion." — ArchcBologicalJournal, vol. i, p. 113. 
Though no positive remains of temples have 
been detected, moldings and sculptures, adapt- 
ed to friezes and entablatures, have been found, 
worked up in parts of the London wall, and may 
have formed portions of sacred buildings pre- 
vious to this their dishonored use. A curious 
altar was discovered twenty years ago in Foster- 
lane, Cheapside ; and in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of St. Michael's, Crooked-lane, and 
other churches, the bones and horns of animals 
offered in sacrifice are buried. These are ves- 
tiges of the pagan worship introduced by the 
conquerors of Britain ; and perhaps the vicinity 
of such relics to spots employed for Christian 
uses, may indicate that buildings, consecrated 
to the honor and promotion of the Christian re- 
hgion, appeared upon the site of heathen temples, 
or were constructed out of them. The fancy 
of the Christian archaeologist will delight to paint 
the blessed change wrought, when Christianity 
was introduced to this British colony ; when 
some teacher of the Divine faith came hither, 
hke Philip, who went down to Samaria and 
preached Christ unto them, ** and there was 
great joy in that city.'' When, instead of being 
left in the darkness of paganism, that message 



ROMAN LONDON. 29 

was proclaimed, which shows the way of salva- 
tion through a crucified Redeemer, conferring 
pardon and peace, on the ground of his medi- 
ation, to the vilest outcasts of mankind who 
shall believe in him. That the gospel was con- 
veyed to the shores of Britain before the end of 
the first century appears most likely, and it is 
equally probable that so early it would be known 
in London ; but the circumstances of its arrival 
are shrouded in a darkness which no learned in- 
quiry of modern times has been able to disperse. 
This is certain, that, in the fourth century, we 
find a bishop of London present at the Council 
of Aries. 

A considerable portion of the ground on which 
the Roman city stood was prepared for the pur- 
pose, after being recovered, by draining and 
embankment, from the river and from marsh 
land. Near the Thames wooden piles abounded, 
driven deep into the boggy earth, and consti- 
tuting the basis of houses and pavements. "Op- 
posite Finsbury Circus, at the depth of nineteen 
feet, a well-turned Roman arch was discovered, 
at the entrance of which, on the Finsbury side, 
were iron bars, placed apparently to restrain the 
sedge and weeds from choking the passage." 
— At chcBological Journal, vol. i, p. 11. 

Of the artistic civilization of Roman London, 



30 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

many proofs and illustrations have been obtained 
during the recent improvements in the city ; the 
account of them would fill a good-sized volume. 
Some were insufficiently investigated ; many 
needlessly destroyed. The antiquary finds the 
spirit of modern utilitarianism sadly opposed to 
his pursuits. Anxious to measure, compare, 
and examine the remains of houses and build- 
ings, that he may form a complete idea of their 
pristine state, as the naturahst determines the 
species of the animal whose leg or shoulder- 
bone he descries in some geological formation — 
the builders and workmen, who have no sym- 
pathy in his curiosity, and are only solicitous to 
finish their contract as soon as possible, at once 
break up the beautiful tesselated pavement with 
their pickaxes, and, without delay, cover up 
baths and villas with bricks and mortar. Other 
valuable signs of past civihzation, indicators of 
the social and domestic life of the early in- 
habitants of the metropolis, are scattered and 
lost, perhaps destroyed. In the paper by Mr. 
Eoache Smith, from which we have already 
derived much assistance, a valuable summary of 
the results of antiquarian discoveries respecting 
London is supplied. He says, " While they 
leave us in doubt of the sites of public edifices, 
and of the arrangements of streets, they recall. 



ROMAN LONDON. 31 

by an abundance of scattered facts, the popu- 
lousness of the place, and the comforts and 
luxuries of its inhabitants. At depths varying 
from ten to twenty feet, we notice throughout 
the city the remains of houses and of a variety 
of domestic utensils. Some of the houses, as 
may be expected, exhibit evidence of the supe- 
rior rank and wealth of their owners, in the rich 
tesselated pavements of their apartments.'* " The 
fictile urns and vessels, in an endless variety of 
shape and pattern, contribute evidence of do- 
mestic comfort, and of that combination of ele- 
gance and utility, which characterizes those 
works of ancient art." Some are proved to 
have been manufactured in Britain ; and on the 
handles of amphorae, and on the rims of pans, 
there are the makers' names. An abundance 
of Samian pottery has been preserved, which is 
a species of earthenware, of a bright red color, 
wrought into cups and dishes, plain and adorned, 
with an ivy-leaf pattern, and also formed into 
bowls, with elaborate designs, comprising mytho- 
logical, bacchanalian, and hunting subjects, 
gladiatorial combats, games, and architectural 
and fanciful compositions. Mr. Smith mentions 
glass utensils, blue, green, and yellow ; fresco 
paintings, which retain a remarkable freshness 
of hue ; knives, and other implements in steel ; 



32 LOlsDOii IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

leathern reticulated sandals, and curious instru- 
ments, resembling those which are used still in 
the west of England for yarn spinning. 

All these signs of Roman civilization have 
come to light out of the soil, buried under the 
present streets of London, helping the imagina- 
tion to reproduce the ancient city, like another 
Herculaneum. But it must not be supposed 
that Roman London, in architectural magnifi- 
cence, was ever equal to the Italian cities. Its 
northern climate, the want of marble, and per- 
haps the absence of first-rate architects and 
workmen, concurred to render the structures in 
Britain inferior to others. It is, in the estima- 
tion of competent judges, highly probable that 
by far the greater portions of the London build- 
ings were constructed of brick. 

As one muses over the results of antiquarian 
researches, the city, now wide spread, shrinks 
in dimensions within the narrow limits already 
described ; and a broad wall is seen belting the 
city all round, and through the gateways we 
may behold armed legions, with their eagles, 
marching into the streets, and making the pave- 
ment ring with their heavy tramp, as they 
advance towards the pretorium, somewhere 
about London Stone, that venerable relic of the 
very oldest time, perhaps, as Camden thought. 



ROMAN LONDON. 33 

the central milliarium or mile-stone. We see 
them disperse and mingle with the citizens. 
Busy crowds sweep along the highways. Shops 
receive their customers ; courts of justice their 
litigants ; temples their worshipers ; nor, hap- 
pily, are there wanting sacred spots, where men 
and women gather together to sing hymns to 
Jesus Christ, rejoicing in that Divine religion 
which gives them the prospect of an eternal 
inheritance, through faith in Him who brings life 
and immortality to light by the gospel. Persons 
are employed in their work-rooms ; the arts of 
civilized life, in their various forms, are busily 
plied ; provisions are obtained and prepared. 
Men of patrician rank entertain their friends in 
the halls of their villas. The plebeian, with his 
family, takes his meal in a humbler abode ; 
people are seen sitting in the porticoes of public 
buildings, or entering the baths by the Thames' 
side. The galley, with its banks of oars, glides 
up the river, and the mariners disembark. Car- 
goes from the mother city and her colonies are 
unshipped, and piled up in warehouses ; and all 
the din and bustle of an old Roman town fall on 
the ear, and engage the attention. 

A new era now opens in English history. The 
Roman empire is broken up. The legions who 
subdued the world are themselves subdued. The 
3 



3-1: LO^-DON IX THE OLDEX" TIME. 

proud eagle cowering down, and folding its wings, 
is taken and chained. The old civilization crum- 
bles and melts away by degrees, and gives place 
to new forms of society, to the production of 
which it materially contributed. The Gothic su- 
persedes the Latin. The wild, rude energy of 
the north is poured like fresh blood into the veins 
of the emasculate south. The Vandals overrun 
Spain, the Franks Gaul, and the Angles and 
Saxons Britain. A new era in the history of Eu- 
rope opens. Britain is changed. It becomes 
Anglo-land, or England, and London becomes 
Saxon London. These changes are all charac- 
teristic of a world, the fashion of which passeth 
away ; and as the historian wiites, and the reader 
peruses the records of such incessant mutation, 
both should realize their own position, as those 
who ''never continue in one stay;" and as the 
shadows of by-gone years fly past them, like 
clouds in a troubled sky, affording emblems of 
the vanity and transitoriness of this mortal hfe, 
they should earnestly seek through Christ an 
inheritance in that world which endureth, whose 
possessions, honors, and blessings, alone can 
satisfy the capacious desires of the human soul. 



SAXON LONDON. 35 

CHAPTER II. 

SAXON LONDON. 

The Romans, at the beginning of the fifth cen- 
tury, abandoned the island after six hundred years' 
possession ; not long after which, the Saxons re- 
duced it to their authority. They were a bar- 
barous people ; but in their history and remains, 
civilization appears growing up among them soon 
after their settlement on our shores. It seems 
probable, that though some Roman cities and 
towns were depopulated and left heaps of ruins, 
the Saxons gathered much of what subsequently 
characterized them from the relics which the 
first masters of Britain left behind. Many Ro- 
man towns were not destroyed, but formed the 
foundations of Saxon ones. London was among 
the number. Under its new possessors, though 
much altered, it would retain marks of what it 
had been. No doubt it lost much of its grandeur 
and refinement, but it does not follow that it 
became thoroughly unromanized. Perhaps some 
part of it might be left to crumble away. Tem- 
ples and villas might be devastated ; and over 
the moldering stones for awhile the wall-flower 
might be allowed to grow, and the ivy to twine 



36 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

its roots; some streets might be deserted, and 
covered with grass ; the site of the Saxon town 
might be shifted a Httle from that of its prede- 
cessor ; fragments of earlier edifices might be 
built up into new and humbler structures, and 
houses or huts of timber might be collected about 
the -walls of the old colony ; but still much that 
was Roman would linger within it. The marks 
impressed by Rome during hundreds of years of 
possession could not be utterly erased. Artisti- 
cally and socially it would leave some image of 
itself behind. The mantle of the old rulers 
would fall on their successors. Anglo-Saxon ar- 
chitecture, Anglo-Saxon municipalities, Anglo- 
Saxon literature, Anglo-Saxon superstitions — all 
exhibit strongly or faintly a Roman impress. 

The history of London during the Anglo-Saxon 
period is very obscure. The few scattered notices 
of it w^hich exist, it is proposed to collect and ex- 
hibit. In the sixth century, Augustine and his 
Latin brethren visited our shores to preach the 
gospel, as they understood it, to our pagan fore- 
fathers. Whatever profession of Christianity had 
previously existed in London had perished out 
of remembrance. The missionaries came to the 
city, and their labors were not without effect. 
Immediately a Christian church was reared. A 
heathen temple in honor of Diana is supposed to 



SAXON LONDON. 37 

have stood on the top of Ludgate Hill. It might 
have been converted into a Christian sanctuary 
during the continuance of the Roman sway, and 
then, after the pagan invasion, reduced to ruins, 
or applied once more to pagan purposes. How- 
ever this might be, Ethelbert, king of Kent, Au- 
gustine's first convert, is said to have erected a 
church here in the year 610. At first, the struc- 
ture was humble, as all the early Saxon churches 
were, but it was greatly improved and ornament- 
ed by succeeding kings and other benefactors. 
Athelstan largely endowed it, and so did Edgar, 
Ethelred, Canute, and Edward the Confessor. 

About the same time, another church was 
raised by king Sebert at Westminster. The 
branches of a small river or brook inclosed an 
island in that fenny district, which, from being 
overspread with thickets and underwood, was 
called Thorney, or the Island of Thorns. In this 
'' terrible spot,'* as it is described, tradition states 
that a temple to Apollo stood, which now became 
the locality of the new Christian edifice. Pre- 
parations were made for dedicating it to St. Pe- 
ter, a ceremony which, according to the super- 
stitious belief of centuries afterwards, was anti- 
cipated by the following miracle, here related as 
a specimen of the incredible stories received in 
tiae Middle Ages : — A fisherman was met by a 



38 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

stranger on the opposite banks of tlie Thames, 
and requested to ferry him over, and wait on the 
side of the Isle of Thorney till he should return. 
Accompanied by a host of angels, this mysterious 
personage entered the new church, and conse- 
crated it, by the light of a supernatural radiance, 
which filled the walls. The fisherman, startled 
at the sight of this illumination, trembled at the 
return of the wonderful priest, who now an- 
nounced himself as no other than the apostle Pe- 
ter, and told him to go at day- break to Mellitus, 
the bishop, and assure him of the consecration. 
He further gave the fisherman a command to cast 
a net into the river, and to convey one of the fish 
to the bishop, assuring him that he should never 
want fish so long as he dedicated a tenth to the 
church. A miraculous draught was the conse- 
quence, and Mellitus, on examining the new edi- 
fice, found the proofs of the apostle's visit in the 
marks of the extinguished tapers and of the 
chrism. The story, if not invented for selfish pur- 
poses, was turned afterwards to that account, 
for the convent of St. Peter's, Westminster, on 
the ground of apostolic grant, claimed a tenth 
of all the salmon caught in the river. Charters 
securing possessions and privileges to the brother- 
hood were preserved by them, but upon these 
no dependence can be placed, as great doubts rest 



SAXON LONDON. 39 

upon their genuineness. Forged documents of 
this description were common during the medise- 
val periods. The accounts just given explain the 
reputed origin of St. Paul's Cathedral and West- 
minster Abbey. 

London, during the early Saxon times, almost 
disappears from history, and then comes out at 
intervals in connection with the Danish invasions, 
which spread so much terror through the land, 
and long threatened to dispossess the Saxon oc- 
cupants of the throne, a result which they for a 
while accomplished. The Londoners were mis- 
erably plundered by the northern corsairs, who 
bore their terrifying standard of the black raven 
within the city gates. In one of their incursions, 
A. D. 839, they stormed, pillaged, and burned 
the place. But before the end of the century it 
was restored by Alfred the Great, who gave it 
in charge to his son-in-law, the earl of Mercia. 
The Danes had a camp about twenty miles from 
London, supposed to be at Hertford, and cover- 
ing the river Lea with' their boats, continually 
threatened the citizens. One summer, in order 
to protect the harvest men in reaping the corn 
round the city, the paternal and valorous monarch 
had to encamp about them, and so ward off the 
impending peril. More effectually to defeat the 
purpose of the invaders, he raised two fortifica- 



40 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

tions on either side of the river, just below the 
Danish station, and by means of canals drained 

the water, so as greatly to lower the level of the 
water, and thus impede the Danish navigation. 
The bravery of the London soldiers is celebrated 
for a battle fought with the Danes and Scots at 
Brunenburgh, soon after which the city, under 
Athelstan, appears greatly revived in prosperity. 
By a law of that king, which appointed a certain 
number of coiners to each of the principal cities, 
eight were allowed to London, the largest num- 
ber allotted to any except Canterbury. In 961, 
London was visited both by plague and fire — the 
latter calamity being of no rare occurrence. 
Whether it was owing to this, or to a considera- 
ble portion of Roman London being deserted at 
an earlier period by the Saxons, but few houses 
were then within the city walls, and those irregu- 
larly placed, the chief part of the population re- 
siding outside Ludgate. It may be mentioned 
as an illustration of the value of land at that time, 
that it sold for a shilling an acre. 

On the return of Danish troublers, London 
was fearfully harrassed again, and was compelled 
to submit to Sweyn, their leader and king. But, 
impatient under Danish rule, the townsmen 
espoused the cause of the Saxon prince, Ed- 
mund Ironside, and elevating him to the throne 



SAXON LONDON. 41 

of his fathers, had him inaugurated to the regal 
office in their own city. This is the first which 
history mentions of the long Hne of coronations 
here and at Westminster. Canute the Dane, in 
his conflict for the throne, sadly afflicted the 
Londoners. Under the year 1016, the Saxon 
Chronicle says : *' Came the ships to Greenwich 
on Rogation days ; and within a httle space they 
went to London, and they dug a great ditch on 
the south side, and dragged their ships to the 
west side of the bridge, and then afterwards 
they ditched the city around, so that no one 
could go either in or out, and they repeatedly 
fought against the city, but the citizens strenu- 
ously withstood them. Then gathered Edmund 
his forces, and went to London, and relieved the 
place, and drove the army in flight to their ships." 
But the Danes were too strong for them in the 
end. Canute subdued London, and took pos- 
session of the Saxon throne. 

Subsequently the city appears to have re- 
covered its prosperity. A witena-gemote was 
held here in this monarch's reign, and out of 
£83,000 voted by the senators, £11,000 was 
raised by London alone — a plain proof of its 
commerce and opulence. Soon after this, men 
from London city sat with the nobles at the 
Witan held at Oxford. Yet London was not the 



42 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

metropolis of England then.^ Indeed, the term 
England, as applied to tlie country before the 
Conquest, by way of denoting the whole king- 
dom, is likely to mislead ; for, in truth, till even 
some time after the Conquest, diflferent parts of 
the island were subject to different authorities. 
After the demolition of the Heptarchy, traces 
of its existence still continued, and the Anglo- 
Saxon kings before Athelstan, who was the first 
sovereign of England, were only kings of Wessex. 
Even Athelstan's descendants had but a very 
general kind of control over the other parts of 
the country, the earldoms of [N'orthumberland 
and Mercia being considerable principalities, ac- 
knowledging only a sort of feudal sovereignty 
in these kinoes of the west. As Winchester was 
the chief city in Wessex, that might for some 
time be more properly considered the capital of 
the kingdom. There the Saxon kings chiefly 
resided. However, notices of a royal residence 
in London appear much earlier than the Con- 
quest ; Canute is described as being here, in his 
royal palace, giving orders for the summary exe- 
cution of the treacherous Edric Streone, whose 
body, after decapitation, was flung out of a 
window into the Thames. This palace must have 

* In the seventh century, London is described as the capital 
of Essex. 



SAXON LONDON. 43 

been of earlier date, and was probably erected 
by Athelstan, on the banks of the river, south 
of St. Paul's. The memory of the monarch is 
retained in the well-known name of Addle Hill. 
In the time of the Confessor, this dwelling-place 
of royalty was forsaken for the palace erected 
by him at Westminster. 

It has been considered by some, that the Con- 
fessor was not the first who erected a palace at 
Westminster. Norden says that one was de- 
stroyed by fire, which had been inhabited by 
Canute about the year 1035. Certainly the 
Danish monarch paid especial regard to the 
convent of St. Peter after it had suffered much 
from the depredations of his countrymen. It 
was the reconstruction of this edifice, about 
which the Confessor was employed at the time 
when he designed for himself a residence at- 
tached to its precincts. Matthew Paris describes 
the abbey as built in a new style of architecture, 
and from the well-preserved remains of it, in 
what is now called the Pix Office, consisting of 
massive pillars and vaulting, we may form an 
idea of what the new style was. Its strong re- 
semblance to Norman works shows, at least, that 
Saxon architecture was then modeled on the 
Norman type ; and the close intercourse kept up 
between the Confessor and the Normans, will 



44 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

account for this. The church was built in the 
shape of a cross, another deviation from the old 
Saxon plan, which excluded transepts. The 
palace erected by Edward contiguous to the ab- 
bey, was his stated residence during the last 
portion of his life. The chroniclers speak of him 
as beholding marvelous and supernatural visions 
there, and, according to tradition, it was in the 
room called the Painted Chamber that he ex- 
pired. His death took place in immediate con- 
nection with the consecration of the edifice he 
was so anxious to rear. Whether he was pre- 
sent at the solemnity is uncertain ; but it is 
plain that the church was consecrated during the 
Christmas festival, and he was buried on Twelfth- 
day. 

All vestiges of Saxon buildings in the city of 
London have disappeared, and in no part of the 
country have we any remains which would afford 
an idea of the distribution and appearance of 
Saxon towns. Streets, however, bearing Anglo- 
Saxon names, such as Horsemonger, Fellmonger, 
Ironmonger, and other denominations taken from 
trade, show how probable it is that in those 
times persons pursuing the same avocations 
lived in the same neighborhood. The Cathe- 
dral of St. Paul's, with the residences of the 
bishop and clergy, and the royal abode not far 



SAXOis LONDON. 45 

oflf, on Addle Hill, would form the most import- 
ant buildings of the place. A market cross and 
guildhall would constitute other leading features 
in the architectural aspect of the old Saxon city. 
There must have been in it some good houses, 
such as we see depicted in manuscript illumina- 
tions, for it was the abode of wealthy merchants ; 
and there would be also residences for great 
men connected with the court. Churches of 
Saxon form and style likewise existed, but, for 
the most part, the buildings were, doubtless, 
poor and mean, many houses little better than 
what we should term hovels, and the thorough- 
fares miry in the extreme, and often impassable, 
as they remained long afterwards. 

The government may be described as having 
been free ; the heads of the city managing their 
own municipal affairs. A chief magistrate, called 
the portreeve, was chosen, and he, with a kind 
of court, formed by the principal burgesses, as- 
sembled and deliberated on affairs. Yet con- 
stitutional lights were by no means fixed, and 
the burgh system would be liable to disturbance. 
Two formidable powers existed in close vicinity 
with the corporation, the king and the bishop. 
Anglo-Saxon kings did interfere with city govern- 
ment, and, at times, appointed royal portreeves, 
and otherwise grasped in their own hands the 



46 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

liberties of the people. (Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, 
vol. ii, p. 335.) The bishops, however, do not 
appear to have exercised in London an influence 
opposed to popular opinion, but rather to have 
united with the citizens in maintaining the in- 
terests of a free community. 

The old name of '' Hustings," still retained at 
Guildhall, was the term applied to the place of 
assembly and discussion. The sound takes us 
into the midst of the ancient gatherings for de- 
bate and city law-making, when Anglo-Saxons 
carried on wars of words, as their Enghsh suc- 
cessors in the corporation do at this day ; but 
were not honored, as pubhc bodies are now, 
with reports of their speeches to be handed 
down to posterity ; so that what they said and 
did, with large store of other interesting matter, 
as is quaintly said, *'has been gathered into the 
wallet which Time carries at his back, wherein 
he puts alms for oblivion." 

There was a peculiar feature in the civic so- 
ciety of the Saxons, in what were called gylds, 
or guilds. The term is derived from gildan, to 
pay, because the persons who constituted the 
association designated by the term, paid each a 
certain amount into a common stock. The union 
was sometimes religious, sometimes political, 
sometimes only of a social and friendly nature ; 



SAXON LOJNDON. 47 

but, in all cases, it was a sworn fraternity, bound 
together by solemn oaths and pledges. Guilds 
of this description were instituted in London at 
an early period. One, which was formed in the 
days of king Edgar, and which was evidently a 
voluntary organization, has been particularly de- 
scribed by Stow : "In the days of king Edgar^ 
more than six hundred years since, there were 
thirteen knights, or soldiers, well beloved of the 
king and the realm, for service by them done, 
which requested to have a certain portion of 
land on the east part of the city, left desolate 
and forsaken by the inhabitants, by reason of 
too much servitude. They besought the king to 
have this land, with the liberty of a guild for- 
ever ; the king granted their request, with con- 
ditions following, that is to say, that each of 
them should victoriously accomplish three com- 
bats, one above ground, one under ground, and 
the third in the water ; and after this, at a cer- 
tain day, in East Smithfield, they should run 
with spears against all comers, all which was 
gloriously performed, and the same day the 
king named it Knighten Guilde." Edward the 
Confessor bestowed, and WiUiam Rufus con- 
firmed, the charter on this guild. Two of the 
combats which constituted the royal conditions 
of privilege are very easily explained. The first 



48 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

was the just, or foot combat, fought with sword 
or battle-ax over a barrier breast high. The 
last was the water tilting, carried on by two 
persons, armed with staves and shields, the one 
trying to ward off the blows of the other, and 
to plunge him into the river. The second kind 
of combat, described as "under ground," re- 
mains, so far as we are aware, an unsolved an- 
tiquarian puzzle. Maddox considers that the 
knights, or cnevights, alluded to by Stow, were 
not soldiers, but simply young men, the word 
'' cneughts'* bearing that signification ; and he 
contends that the guild was secular rather than 
military, chiefly founding his opinion on the cir- 
cumstance, that the descendants of these cneughts 
are described by Stow as burgesses of London ; 
but though the association might not be for 
martial purposes, it is plain from the tenure on 
which the advantages of the guild were held, 
that the persons sharing in them were required 
to be such as were wont to addict themselves to 
martial pursuits. Indeed, those pursuits were 
so common in the times we are speaking of, and 
men were then so generally called upon to de- 
fend their rights in battle, that it is difficult to 
draw the line between the soldier and the citizen. 
The guild was called the portsoke, from the 
situation of the land allotted to the company; 



SAXON LONDON. 49 

and while the memory of the original designation 
of the territory is preserved in the name of Port- 
soken Ward, traces of the original title of the 
company itself may be found in the etymology 
of *' ]^ightingale Lane," in that neighborhood. 
The appellation which sounds so rustic and 
musical, and might naturally conjure up in our 
minds the picture of a shady avenue of fine old 
trees, vocal with the warblings of the most me- 
lodious of birds — this "Nightingale Lane''' — is no 
other than a corruption of the Cnightena-guild 
land. Amusing though this may be, it is far 
less so than many which the history of the names 
of places in London would afford. 

Before the close of the Anglo-Saxon period — 
indeed, earher than the date of the origin of the 
Cnighten-guild — there existed a foreign frater- 
nity in London, which came under the same 
generic denomination. This was the guild of 
Easterlings, or the steel-yard merchants. They 
belonged to the great German or Hanseatic 
League, formed for the protection of the Baltic 
trade. By a law of Ethelred it was enacted, 
" that the emperor's men, or Easterlings, coming 
with their ships to Billingsgate, shall be ac- 
counted worthy of good laws." They were not 
allowed to forestall the markets from the Lon- 
don burgesses, and were required to pay toll, 
4 



50 LONDOl^ IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

both at Christmas and Easter, of two gray cloths, 
one brown cloth, ten pounds of pepper, five 
pairs of gloves, and two vessels of vinegar. 



CHAPTER III. 

NORMAN L O N D O N i 

After the battle of Hastings, though it in fact 
decided the question as to William the Nor- 
man's accession to the throne of Britain, the 
patriotic spirit of many of the Anglo-Saxons 
stimulated them to resistance. The Londoners 
deeply sympathized with Harold, and after his 
fatal defeat a very considerable party of them 
espoused the cause of Edgar Athehng ; others, 
however, from prudential considerations, were 
inclined to submit to the Conqueror. Hearing 
of this state of things, the latter hastened to- 
wards the city, but on being met near South- 
wark by a small army of the hostile citizens, 
though he defeated them by a band of Norman 
horsemen, he judged it most expedient to defer 
an attack for the present on so formidable a 
place, and therefore marched to Berkhampstead. 
Disunion prevailed in the councils of the patriot 
citizens. Jealousy was inspired by Edwin and 



50RMAN LONDON. 61 

Morcar, two powerful earls, who commanded 
the army enlisted under the banner of Edgar. 
Stigand, bishop of London, and his clergy, 
proved faithless to the cause of their country- 
men. Before Wilham had advanced a step 
nearer to the city, they yielded full submission, 
and swore dutiful allegiance, at the same time 
persuading the inhabitants to throw open their 
gates to receive the JSTorman prince. Rejoicing 
in this favorable turn of affairs, he marched from 
Berkhampstead, and was met at the entrance 
of his future metropolis by the magistrates and 
principal people, who presented him with the 
city keys. Yet, mistrustful of their fidelity, he 
carefully surrounded the place of his abode 
with military defenses, and at his coronation in 
Westminster Abbey, stationed a number of sol- 
diers to a'uard the edifice. The acclamations 
within the walls on the crown being placed on 
the proud J^orman's head, operated as a signal 
for a barbarous act, which tended to widen the 
distance and deepen the hatred between the 
Anglo-Saxons and their invaders. The troops 
set fire to the houses in the vicinity of the church, 
and then proceeded to pillage the city. The 
confusion produced disturbed the ceremony, the 
people rushed out of the building to look after 
their property, and the monarch was left alone 



Oli LO^DON I^'' THE OLDEN TIME. 

with the clergy engaged in the ceremonial of 
the coronation. The remembrance of this out- 
rage rankled in the breasts of the Saxon citizens, 
and made them abhor the sway of their new 
master. To mitigate their displeasure, or to 
satisfy their requests, he granted them the fol- 
lowing charter, which Maitland describes as 
consisting of four lines and a quarter, beautifully 
written in the Saxon character on a slip of parch- 
ment six inches long : — " William the king greets 
William the bishop, and Godfrey the portreeve, 
and all the burgesses in London, both French 
and Enghsh. And I declare that I grant you 
to be all law worthy, as you were in the days 
of King Edward, and I grant that every child 
shall be his father's heir after his father's days, 
and I will not suffer any person to do you 
wrong." 

But, not trusting for security among his new 
subjects to the effect of just concessions, Wilham 
erected some fortifications, which contributed 
towards forming that great edifice and memorial 
of English history, the Tower of London. Gun- 
dulph, bishop of Rochester, the builder of the 
old j^orman keep in his episcopal city, is the 
reputed architect of the works performed at that 
period. To him probably belongs the com- 
mencement of the structure which became the 



XOIUIAN LONDON. 53 

stronghold of the early kings after the Conquest. 
Whatever building there might have been in 
this vicinity, connected with the city wall, in the 
time of the Romans, no mention is made of any 
castle or tower here in Saxon times. The por- 
tion of the structure attributed to Gundulph is 
the White Tower, which rises with such massive 
strength and grandeur, and rests with such a 
lordly air amidst the buildings of this venerable 
fortress. 

The era of the Conquest was the beginning 
of a period of remarkable architectural activity, 
to which England is indebted for several of 
those noble remains, ecclesiastical and military, 
which now awaken so much archaeological in- 
terest, besides many a church and castle long 
since swept away by the hand of time. London 
witnessed the busy toils of the Norman builders 
elsewhere than by Tower Hill. Old St. Paul's, 
of which no vestige remains, was rebuilt, after 
its destruction by fire towards the close of the 
eleventh century, by Bishop Maurice and his 
successor, Richard de Beaumeis. Wilham of 
Malmsbury describes the new structure " as so 
stately and beautiful, that it was worthily num- 
bered among the most famous buildings," and 
this, be it remembered, was said in an age which 
produced the glorious cathedral of Lincoln, The 



54 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

original Westminster Hall was the work of 
William Rufus, which was thought too large by 
some of his barons, but far too small by the 
monarch himself, who replied to their exclama- 
tions of astonishment, or disapproval, "that it 
was only a bedchamber in comparison with the 
building he intended to make." The priory of 
St. John of Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell, that re- 
gion then of green fields and fountains, and the 
noble priory of St. Bartholomevv% in Smithfield, 
built by Lahere, and of which some portions, 
exhibiting beautiful specimens of the Norman 
style, continue in the choir of the church of that 
parish, were both the fruits of pious liberality 
and artistic skill at the opening of the twelfth 
century. Fifty years later, the beautiful chapel 
of St. Stephen's, which has given an appellation 
to the House of Commons, from that assembly 
having before the last fire long met within its 
walls, rose at the bidding of the sovereign whose 
name it bore. The last half of the century saw 
the completion of the Church of the Templars 
in Fleet-street, just as the Norman style was 
merging into the early Enghsh, of which the 
Temple Church in some parts presents a striking 
memorial and illustration. 

But the most notable and truly civic stmc- 
ture connected with the London of that age is 



NORMAN LONDON. 55 

the bridge, which was begun in 1176, and fin- 
ished in 1209. That a bridge existed in the 
time of the Romans has been ah^eady remarked. 
That a wooden one existed in the Saxon period, 
often injured, and almost demolished, and then 
repaired, is beyond all doubt ; but the first stone 
bridge of which we have any account was that 
which, at the date just mentioned, vras com- 
menced by Peter of Colechurch, who, liowever, 
died before the completion of his task. It con- 
sisted of nineteen heavy piers and twenty narrou- 
arches, and in the centre sustained a chapel, 
dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, composed of 
two stories ; the upper one exhibiting a lofty 
and elegant fane, with pointed windows and 
slender pillars, in the early English style ; the 
lower inserted in the solid masonry of the pier, 
and constituting a low, broad crypt, with a range 
of windows looking out upon the river. Built 
upon wool- packs, as the story went — by which 
was conveyed, in a figure, the fact that the cost 
of the structure was mainly provided for by a 
tax on wool — the bridge was a manifest sign of 
the progress of commerce, while it afforded fa- 
cilities the most valuable for the transit of goods 
across the water. 

These architectural works in stone show the 
improved artistic civilization introduced by the 



66 LO>'DON IN THE OLDEX TIME. 

Normans ; and, in addition, it may be remarked, 
that in 1189 it was directed that all houses 
thereafter to be erected should be built of stone, 
with party-walls of the same, and covered with 
slates and tiles. The dimensions prescribed for 
the party- walls were sixteen feet in height and 
three in thickness — an order which curiously 
illustrates the substantial notions of building that 
prevailed in those days. The reason given for 
the regulation, and one which is abundantly 
confirmed by the accounts of desolating fires 
recorded in the chronicles, is, that '' in ancient 
times the greater part of the city was built of 
wood, and the houses covered with thatch, 
reeds, and the like material, so that when any 
house took fire, the greater part of the city was 
consumed thereby ; as it happened in the first 
year of king Stephen, when, by a fire which 
began at London Bridge, the church of St. Paul 
was burned, and then that fire spread, con- 
suming houses and buildings, even unto the 
church of St. Clement Danes. Afterwards, 
many citizens, to avoid such danger, according 
to their means, built on their freeholds stone 
houses, roofed with thick tiles, and protected 
against the ravages of fire, whereby it often fell 
out that when a fire was kindled in the city, and 
had wasted many edifices, and reached such a 



NORMAN LONDON, 5l 

house, not being able to injure it, it there became 
extinguished, so that many neighbors' houses 
were wholly saved from fire by that house.'' — 
Archoeologiccd Journal, vol. iv, p. 281. How 
far the new regulations took effect does not 
clearly appear ; but from the fact that fires were 
less frequent and ruinous after this time, it seems 
that stone structures must have become in- 
creasingly numerous, though very many houses 
of wood and plaster, perhaps a majority, still 
remained. A distinction in old conveyances 
is made between " dornus''' and '^ cedificiaj^ the 
former referring to stone buildings, the latter to 
wooden ones. They v/ould seem not to have 
exceeded one story in height, and in this re- 
spect presented a contrast to the houses in 
Paris, which at that time were lofty, and greatly 
excited the admiration of Henry III. on his 
visit to St. Louis. ** The ground floor of the 
London houses at this time was aptly called a 
cellar, the upper a solar." *' The result of a 
careful examination of the evidence relating to 
the appearance of London houses in the thir- 
teenth century, leads unavoidably to the con- 
clusion that they were both small and of low 
elevation ; the shops were generally wooden 
sheds, erected in front of the inhabited tene- 
ipents.*^ 



oS LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

The highways were in a miserable state of 
repair; indeed, the streets seem to have been 
totally unpaved, and must have been, in certain 
states of the weather, impassable, if we are to 
judge from the oft-mentioned fact of the wooden 
steeple of Bow Church, in Cheapside, blown off 
in a high wind, having sunk almost out of sight 
in the deep slough into which it was plunged. 
A considerable quantity of ground was cultivated 
for gardens, giving the city a very green and 
pleasant appearance. From the coroners' rolls 
we gather accounts of mortal accidents which 
befell boys who attempted to steal apples out of 
the orchards in Paternoster Row and Ivy Lane. 

'* At the present time, when the sanitary con- 
dition of the metropolis is attracting so much 
public attention, it may not be uninteresting to 
inquire how far it was provided for in ancient 
days. We have seen that so early as 1189, the 
due construction of gutters and the convenient 
dispersion of waste water were objects of con- 
sideration. The out-buildings were not left un- 
regulated; they were prohibited within the dis- 
tance of two and a half feet from a neighboring 
tenement, and the propriety of their construction 
was liable to the survey of a jury, chosen by the 
authorities. The situation of London, with an 
easy descent towards the Thames, was favorable 



NORMAN LONDON'. 59 

to a surface drainage, aided, in a great degree, 
by those natural streams whicli then flowed open 
to the river, the Wallbrook aiid the Fleet, the 
cleansing and maintenance of which in a proper 
state were from an early period objects of soli- 
citude to the magistracy. It may be collected 
also, from the perusal of ancient evidences, that 
narrow channels ran down the centre of many 
of those streets which led directly to the river 
side. Bad as the effect of those uncovered 
sewers must have been, they were better than 
no drainage whatever. The greatest source of 
annoyance, however, was the existence of the 
public shambles, almost in the very heart of the 
city, clustering round the church of St. Nicholas, 
the patron of butchers as well as fishermen. 
From a remote time, ordinance succeeded or- 
dinance, leveled at this flagrant nuisance. There 
being no under-drainage, the refuse of the 
slaughter-house was thrown by the butchers 
wherever they could find a place — into the 
streets or the Fleet, or into the river, where, 
often left on the banks, the putrefying heaps 
oftended the olfactory senses of the Edwards 
and Henries, as they rowed between West- 
minster and the Tower, and produced impres- 
sive monitions to the mayor to repress the in- 
tolerable excesses of the fleshmongers; but in 



60 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

vain : it was a nuisance that grew with the in- 
crease of the metropohs, and for which no suf- 
ficient remedy has even yet been provided. By 
a regulation passed in the reign of Richard II., 
the blood and offal of the shambles were to be 
boated into the mid-stream of the Thames at 
ebb tide; but this and subsequent enactments 
were evaded, or carelessly enforced, and the in- 
habitants still groan, in the nineteenth century, 
under an infliction which their less refined an- 
cestors tried to avoid in the thirteenth." 

We may add, that the interest now taken in 
the kindred question of supplying the citizens 
with water, increases our curiosity to know how 
they were situated at the time we are speaking 
of in that respect. Till the reign of Henry III., 
the people were dependent for water upon the 
rivulets which sprang from Holywell and else- 
where. These had, in the process of years, been 
diminished and injured by the erection of mills 
and houses, and other encroachments. To meet 
the deficiency, large pipes, of a six-inch bore, 
were laid down, connecting six fountains, or 
wells, at Tyburn, with diflferent parts of the city. 
These emptied themselves into conduits, or cis- 
terns of lead, castellated with stone, the first 
and chief of which was erected in Westcheap, in 
the year 1285. Their number afterwards in- 



NORMAN LONDON. 61 

creased to above nineteen; and, if we may an- 
ticipate the customs of later times, we would 
state, on the authority of Stow, that it was usual 
for the lord mayor, accompanied by the alder- 
men and other worthy citizens, on horseback, on 
the 18th September, to visit the fountains from 
which the conduits were supplied ; hunting a 
hare before and a fox after dinner, in St. Giles 
in the Fields, near Tyburn. 

The most perfect picture of London in the 
twelfth century is that supplied by Fitz Stephen, 
a monk of Canterbury, and a friend of Becket's, 
whose life he wrote, and to which he prefixes 
a graphic account of the London of his day. 
This author died in 1191, and his description 
may be applied to the period shortly before his 
death. He acts the part of a very obliging 
Cicerone, and as we read his pages we can al- 
most imagine ourselves walking under his guid- 
ance through the streets of the Anglo-Norman 
capital. Born in the city, and brought up under 
good masters, a learned man, and especially 
learned in matters concerning his birth-place, 
which he pronounces the most noble and cele- 
brated capital in the world, possessing abundant 
wealth, extensive commerce, and great magnifi- 
cence, he invites our confidence, and gives a 
promise of instruction and entertainment, which 



62 Lo^'DO^' in the oldejs time. 

he amply repays. He begins by informing us, 
that in London and in the suburbs there are thir- 
teen larger conventual churches, besides a hun- 
dred and thirty-six smaller parochial ones. On 
the east side stands the palatine to\Yer, a fortress 
of great size and strength, the court and walls 
of which are erected upon a deep foundation, the 
mortar, he says, being tempered with the blood 
of beasts, — an idea which, taken literally, as 
doubtless he meant it, shows the strange credu- 
lity of the age ; but which, employed otherwise, 
may be regarded as the symbol of the history 
of the edifice, which, from the horrid scenes and 
events associated with it, may well be said" to 
have its foundations stained with blood. On the 
west of the city are two castles, strongly forti- 
fied ; on the north side there are towers at pro- 
per intervals, and the broad and lofty walls on 
the three sides contain seven double gates. He 
notices the gardens of the citizens who dwell in 
the suburbs, furnished with trees, spacious and 
beautiful ; and alludes, with evident love of rural 
scenery, to the fields and meadow-land, inter- 
spersed with streams, bordered by *' clacking'* 
mills, and to the old forest on the north side, 
abounding in stags, fallow deer, boars, and wild 
bulls. The soil is not gravelly and barren, but 
rich, and oriental-like, yielding abundant crops, 



JS'OKMAN LONDON. 63 

in return for the husbandman's toils. There are 
excellent springs on the same side of London, 
Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's well, 
visited by the youth of the city, when they take 
their -walks on a summer's evening. The popu- 
lation he seems to overrate, when he numbers 
as inhabitants the eighty thousand soldiers, who, 
he says, marched out of the gates in the reign 
of king Stephen. Whatever might be the size 
of that army, and here it is probably exaggera- 
ted, it by no means follows that the men com- 
posing it Avere London citizens. Peter of Blois 
gives forty thousand as the amount of the popu- 
lation, probably nearer the mark ; but statements 
originating in times when statistics were so im- 
perfect, claim but little rehance. Certainly, we 
should suppose the people in London could not 
be very numerous, if v^e are to believe the ro- 
mantic legend of Thomas a Becket's mother, an 
eastern damsel, who found out the man to whom 
she had been betrothed in the Holy Land, by 
running through the streets, crying, Gilbert, 
Gilbert. The citizens, adds Fitzstephen, are re- 
spected, and noted, above all other citizens, for 
the elegance of their manners, dress, table, and 
discourse. Then follows an account of the pub- 
lic schools, three in number, attached to the 
three principal churches, the scholars on festival 



64 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

days displaying their proficiency in logic, rhetoric, 
and verse. He alludes to the tradesmen, arti- 
sans, and laborers in London, having each their 
separate station, according to their employ- 
ment ; and dilates, with some gastronomic zest, 
upon the cook-shops and eating-houses, the 
veritable predecessors of the convenient establish- 
ments in the same line, now so numerous. One 
hardly recognizes Smithfield in the following 
description, yet no other place is meant : " There 
is without one of the gates, immediately in the 
suburb, a certain smooth field in name and reality. 
There every Friday, unless it be one of the more 
solemn festivals, is a noted show of well-bred 
horses exposed for sale. The earls, barons, and 
knights, who are at the time resident in the city, 
as well as most of the citizens, flock thither 
either to look on or buy. It is pleasant to see 
nags, with their sleek and shining coats, smoothly 
ambling along. Horses for squires, young blood- 
colts, beasts of burden, and valuable chargers, 
stock this ancient market. Sometimes the spot 
is transformed into a race-com'se, and the jockey 
lads, inspired with the -love of praise and the 
hope of victory, clap spurs to their flying horses, 
lashing them with whips, and inciting them with 
shouts.'' In poetical style, Fitz Stephen enume- 
mtes among the merchandise of his native city, 



NORMAN LONDON. 65 

the gold, spice, and frankincense of Arabia, the 
weapons of Scythia, the palm-oil of Bagdad, the 
precious stones of Egypt, the furs of Norway 
and Russia, and the Tvdnes of France. '' I think," 
he proceeds, " that there is no city in which 
more approved customs are observed, in attend- 
ing church, honoring God's ordinances, keeping 
festivals, giving alms, receiving strangers, con- 
firming espousals, contracting maniages, cele- 
brating weddings, pi^eparing entertainments, 
welcoming guests, and also in the arrangement 
of the funeral ceremonies and the burial of the 
dead. The only inconveniences of London are the 
immoderate drinking of foolish persons, and the 
frequent fires. Moreover, almost all the bishops, 
abbots, and oTeat men of Eno;land, are in a man- 
ner citizens and freemen of London, as they have 
magnificent houses there, to which they resort, 
spending large sums of money, whenever they 
are summoned thither to councils and assem- 
blies by the king, or their metropolitan, or are 
compelled to go there on their own business." 
A particularly detailed account of London sports 
winds up this almost pictorial sketch. They in- 
clude sacred plays and mysteries, cockfighting, 
and foot-bal], military games, and skating on 
the ice, the men binding under their feet the 
shin-bones of some animal — a clever expedient 



66 LOXDOX IN THE OLDEX TIME. 

in the room of metal skates — and taking- in their 
hands poles shod with iron. The running at tlie 
quintain he particularly describes — a sport on 
the river Thames, which consisted in breaking a 
lance against a target, while the boat shot under 
it. An unskillful management of the lance was 
apt to upset the performer into the river. 

London was particularly involved in the con- 
test between the empress Matilda and her rival 
and conquei'or king Stephen, the possession of 
this city being of prime importance. But as that 
conflict belongs to the history of the kingdom at 
large, and the part which the citizens took in it 
throws no light on their social condition, we shall 
merely remark, that they espoused the cause of 
the king, and suffered a little from the super- 
cilious and harsh conduct of Matilda ; and then 
we shall pass on to notice some further particu- 
lars, connected with the civil and political con- 
dition of the city in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries. 

London in the twelfth century was a chartered 
city. As early as the time of the Conqueror, 
we have already seen, a general charter was 
granted to it, nominally confirming its former 
privileges ; another charter of a similar kind was 
conferred by the same monarch ; but the grand 
charter, upon which the rights and customs of 



NORMAN LONDON. 67 

the city in Norman times were based, was be- 
stowed by Henry I. That instrument re-estab- 
hshed their former immunities, constituted Mid- 
dlesex the county of the city, under one jurisdic- 
tion, exempted the citizens from liabihty to be 
tried elsewhere, exempted them from certain 
royal dues, and from amercement in case of the 
escape of murderers, and released them from ex- 
posure to wager of battle — a method of trial 
similar to duelling — and from the burden of 
lodging the king's servants, which had become 
intolerably expensive. It also freed them from 
tolls, gave them quiet enjoyment of their sokes, 
of which an explanation will presently be aflford- 
ed, limited amercements for human life to one hun- 
dred shillings, forbade unjust prosecutions, gave 
power to recover debts from persons in the coun- 
try, and confirmed the old privileges of hunting 
in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and in the 
Chiltern Hundreds. The exemption from tolls 
led to a curious controversy, of which we find a 
full account in the Chronicles of Jocelin of Brake- 
lond. (See p. 21, Tomlin's Translation.) Ac- 
cording to the charter, the Londoners might travel 
and send their goods where they, pleased, free 
from passage duties and all other customs ; but 
the abbot Sampson, of the monastery of St. Ed- 
mundsburv, still claimed toll of the London mer- 



68 LONDON IX THE OLDEN TIME. 

cliants, on the ground that Edward the Confes- 
sor granted the brotherhood the right of demand- 
ing such assessments from all who frequented the 
fair held in the goodly town of Bury. This 
matter caused great debate at the city hustings, 
and as London could do without Bury better than 
Bury could do without London, it was resolved 
that the citizens should abstain from attending 
the said fair altogether. For two years they kept 
away, which greatly troubled the abbot Sampson 
and the good townspeople of Bury, who profited 
by their metropolitan visitors. It was at last 
agreed, that if the citizens would nominally ac- 
knowledge the claim by paying the money, it 
should be immediately refunded to them — a plan 
to which the latter consented, willing to concede 
the right if they might save their pockets. A 
fresh disturbance afterwards took place, because 
the bailiffs of Bury took fifteen pence for toll from 
the London carts, on their way from Yarmouth 
with loads of herrings. The citizens threatened 
to level the abbot's storehouses with the ground 
for this oflPense, whereupon that ecclesiastical dig- 
nitary paid back the fifteen pence, without pre- 
judice, however, as he declared, to the pending 
question of right. A general exemption from 
toll was a privilege granted by our sovereigns to 
many corporations and places. 



KOKMAN LONDON. 



69 



The chief inliabitants of London were the land- 
owners, for the most part of Norman descent, 
between whom and the Saxons — the conquerors 
and the conquered— a distinction of race and of 
interest was still kept up, tending to produce 
mutual heartburning, hatred, strife, and misery. 
These lordly magnates might be seen clad in ar- 
mor, or in the guise of hunters, going forth to 
their field-sports with hawk in hand. But mer- 
chants and artisans rapidly rose in civic society, 
and vied with them in importance. The port of 
London, though not equal to Southampton, and 
Winchester, was flourishing, and fast advancing 
in commerce and riches. The practice of the 
useful arts was losing its dishonorable associa- 
tions, and artisans were vying with their aristo- 
cratic neighbors in the pursuit of civic dignities. 
One of the sheriffs in the last year of the reign 
of king John was Benedictus Campanarius, or 
the bell founder. While plebeian burgesses were 
aspiring to run the race of ambition with their 
fellow-citizens, who boasted of gentle blood, the 
latter, instead of softening their feelings towards 
the former, manifested the more stern opposition. 
The Norman party in the city, in the reign of 
Eichard I., endeavored as much as possible to 
oppress the Saxons. Inspired by common sym- 
pathy, the former showed their dislike to the 



70 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

latter, and a selfisli care for their own interests, 
by levying, in unfair proportions, the talliages, or 
arbitrary exactions, which the monarch every now 
and then made on his subjects. Richard was en- 
gaged in war with France, and needing money 
to carry on his campaign, required an extraor- 
dinary aid from his English capital. The mayor 
and aldermen imposed a disproportionate part of 
this pecuniary burden on Saxon shoulders. This 
led to a conflict, which brought into notice Wil- 
liam, surnamed the Longbeard, whose story forms 
one of the most interesting episodes in the history 
of the metropohs. The Normans shaved, and Wil- 
liam seems to have cherished his flowing beard 
as an emblem of his Saxon descent and patriotic 
spirit. On the occasion of the meeting at the 
common hall, that relic of the old Saxon busting, 
which still remained to check in some measure 
the arbitrary proceedings of the civic governors, 
William presented himself to plead the cause of 
the oppressed people of his country. Learned 
in the law, and master of ISTorman French, pos- 
sessed, also, of great natural eloquence, he was 
a formidable antagonist, and so perplexed and 
annoyed the party in power, that he brought 
down on his head a larger measure of odium and 
reproach than ever. To add to his ofiense in 
their estimation, and increase their anger and 



^"OKMAN LO^DOX. 71 

hatred, he ventured to cross over to France, and 
to lay the case before king Richard, who gracious- 
ly promised him redress. Encouraged by the 
royal favor, he returned to England, resolved to 
stand by his countrymen more zealously than 
before ; and at the same time, the knowledge 
that he, a Saxon, had dared to complain of the 
Normans before their own king, inflamed the lat- 
ter with indignation. Hubert, archbishop of 
Canterbury, in conjunction with the predominant 
party of the metropolis, issued an ordinance, for- 
bidding any one to leave the city without per- 
mission, and imprisoned some for disobeying their 
injunction. A popular outbreak was the result. 
A party was formed, who hastily armed them- 
selves, and the Longbeard placed himself at their 
head. Still more eloquent in the use of his na- 
tive and racy Saxon than even in that of the 
Xorman French, he stimulated the people by his 
harangues, in which he intermingled a strange re- 
ligious tone of expression, which seems to show 
that he was somewhat of a mystic as well as 
politician. Taking for a text, " With joy shall 
ye draw water out of the wells of salvation," he 
went on to say, " 1 am the saviour of the poor ; 
do you, ye poor who have felt how heavy is the 
hand of the rich, now draw from my fountain the 
water of knowledge and salvation, and draw it 



72 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

with joy, for the time of your visitation is at hand. 
I will divide the waters from the waters, that is, 
the men from the men ; I will separate the peo- 
ple who are humble and faithful from the people 
who are proud and perfidious ; I will divide the 
elect from the reprobate, as the light from the 
darkness." This perversion of Scripture lan- 
guage, so repugnant to our sentiments and feel- 
ings, no doubt told upon the ignorant and super- 
stitious multitude to whom it was addressed. 
Moved with a half religious and half political en- 
thusiasm, they followed through the streets their 
long-bearded champion, shouting his praise, and 
calling him the king and deliverer of the poor. 
Summoned bpfore the rulers of the city, he boldly 
obeyed, attended by his adherents, whose num- 
ber and courage alarmed their enemies. Find- 
ing that force would not avail, they employed 
artifice, and contrived to sow suspicion in the 
minds of the Saxons respecting their leader, and 
to lull them into a confidence that help might be 
hoped for from the opposite quarter. Securing 
hostages from them to preserve the public peace, 
they got them completely into their power, and 
then attempted to seize William on the first fa- 
vorable opportunity that presented itself. For- 
cibly resisting their attack upon him, he, with a 
few companions, fled to Bow Church, where they 



^ORMAN LOisDON. 73 

barricaded the doors, and prepared to stand a 
siege, hoping for help from the citizens, whose 
cause they had advocated. But, whether de- 
terred through fear of the danger in which they 
would involve their hostages if they repaired to 
arms, or through want of faith in their old pro- 
phet and hero, they afforded him no help in this 
his last extremity ; and the archbishop Stigand, 
his declared foe, ordering the church to be set 
on fire, compelled the inmates to surrender. Tied, 
to a horse's tail, his venerable beard covered with 
dust and blood, William was dragged through 
the streets to the Tower, and thence, after sum- 
mary judgment, to Tyburn to be hanged. His 
reputation as a saint, if it had suflfered at all, 
now revived, and fragments of the gallows on 
which he was executed were long preserved by 
the Saxons among their precious relics. 

London, from time immemorial, has been di- 
vided into wards ; probably they existed in Saxon 
times ; certainly, under the Romans they were 
well known and recognized. These wards bore 
the same relation to the city which hundreds 
did to the shire, and were for certain purposes 
each a distinct jurisdiction, with its wardmote 
leet, and alderman ; but one of the most re- 
markable peculiarities in the government and 
social condition of London in the twelfth and 



74 L02sD0N IN THE olde:; time. 

thirteenth centuries, was the prevalent existence 
of certain territorial divisions, known by the 
name of sokes, to which reference, it will be 
remembered, is made in the charter of Henry I. 
The word signifies franchise, or liberty, and the 
territories thus designated were vested in the 
hands of persons who formed a class of feudal 
lords, possessed to some extent of independent 
and irresponsible power. The orgin of these 
petty sovereignties, for such they were, is very 
obscure, but there is one of them which may 
without difficulty be traced to its beginning. 
The Knighten Guild, who had a plot of ground 
on the outside of one of the eastern gates, has 
been already mentioned. This guild was called 
the Portsoke, (literally the gate franchise,) and 
in the days of Queen Maud, or Matilda, under- 
went a change. Upon her founding the priory 
of the Holy Trinity, in 1115, the fraternity gave 
to the convent the land and soke described, 
only reserving to themselves certain commercial 
privileges. The prior now became lord of the 
soke, and was admitted among the magnates of 
the city as a territorial alderman, riding on 
state occasions in civic processions among the 
scarlet-clad grandees, he being distinguished by 
an ecclesiastical mantle of purple. Speaking of 
this alderman-prior, who figures much in the 



^'ORMAN LONDON. Y5 

early history of the metropoHs, we may notice a 
circumstance connected with one who held that 
important office. Towards the street which 
runs by Houndsditch, Stow tells us there were 
in his day some cottages, two stories high, with 
little garden-plots for poor, bed-ridden people, 
built by one of the priors of the Holy Trinity. 
*' In his youth,'' says the antiquary, "he remem- 
bered that devout people would often walk, 
especially on a Friday, down to Houndsditch, 
to look at the poor inmates of the almshouses, 
and give them money as they lay on their bed 
close to the open window, on which was spread 
a linen cloth, and a string of beads, to indicate 
that there rested a bed-ridden patient who could 
now do nothing but pray." This little peep 
into the private and obscure life of old London 
illustrates the symbolic language of the time, 
and the kind-heartedness which was blended with 
the prevalent superstitions. Greatly changed 
is that region from what it was when these 
good Samaritans used to go down that way; 
still more different is it from what it was when 
the prior of Holy Trinity ruled over that district 
as the liege lord of the soke. 

Next, perhaps, in importance to that reverend 
functionary, was the Lord Fitz waiter, the city 
banner-bearer claiming and enjoying sovereign 



76 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

rights in his soke of Castle Baynard, a small 
district contiguous to his Norman fortress of 
that name, close to Fleet ditch. There was also 
the soke of Peverill, orginally the appanage of 
the illegitimate son of the conqueror, well-known 
by that surname. The dean and chapter of 
St. Paul's, too, had their soke ; and these singu- 
lar seignories were held by foreigners as well as 
Englishmen. The king of Scotland held one. 
Two belonged to foreign monasteries. Thus 
London was divided into a number of little 
feudal principalities, over which the lords re- 
spectively exercised their cherished powers, one 
of which was, the much-valued right in those 
days of hanging any culprit who lived or had 
wandered into the demesne — a right known by 
the barbarous name, as barbarous as the custom, 
of infang-theof, and outfang-theof. The owner 
of a soke could also protect culprits if he liked, 
and often did so, to the arrest of justice, the 
encouragement of disorder and crime, and the 
great injury of society. No municipal officer 
could exercise any authority in these jurisdic- 
tions, so that a very large portion of the city 
and inhabitants was withdrawn from the proper 
magistrates, and placed entirely at the mercy ot 
these petty princes. After the manner of feudal 
tenants, the occupiers of premises performed 



NORMAN LONDON. 77 

Buit and service at tlieir respective courts, and 
all this anomalous kind of authority was a herit- 
able estate. It should be added, that the sokes 
have, by some archaeologists, been confounded 
with the city wards ; but this, except in reference 
to the soke of the prior before-mentioned, is a 
mistake. The boundaries were not the same, 
nor were the privileges. Moreover, the juries 
of the wards in Edward the First's reign com- 
plained of the sokes, as liberties held to the 
detriment of the crown. The soke ultimately 
disappeared, and gave way to the wards ; but 
so long as they co-existed, it is plain that there 
must have been great confusion, and many a 
conflict between the municipal powers and the 
old feudal sokeholders. It was, in fact, an 
example of the kind of antagonism exhibited 
under so many forms in that age, between the 
foimer customs then dying out, and the new 
spirit of civilization then springing up into life, 
power, and promise. 

Another pecuhar form of society in London, 
belonging to the period now under review, is 
found in the guilds, or corporations of crafts- 
men. Originally they were voluntary societies 
for the protection of trade, and though much 
opposed, oppressed, and persecuted by the 
higher classes, who were jealous of the growing 



^78 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

power of art and commerce, tbey continued to 
live and thrive. In the twelfth century, we find 
a distinct mention of the Saddlers' Guild, the 
oldest on record. They had their alderman, 
chaplain, four eschevins, or magistrates, and 
elders, and were closely connected with the 
canons of St. Martin-le- Grand, who were bound 
to perform certain religious rites on their behalf, 
particularly the offering of two masses, one for 
the hving, the other for the deceased members 
of the fraternity. On the death of a brother, 
the bell of St. Martin's church was to be tolled, 
for which eightpence was to be paid by the 
alderman. Next in antiquity is the Woolen 
Cloth Weavers' Guild, which received a charter 
from Henry II., the first royal charter of the 
kind on record. They enjoyed the privilege of 
a close corporation, admitting their own mem- 
bers on certain conditions, and holding their own 
courts for the settlement of matters relating to 
their trade. In the reign last mentioned, guilds 
became common. King John, in the year 1201, 
for some unknown cause expelled them from 
the city. Eighteen spurious ones were set up 
without royal license. 

The chief ruler in London, for some time after 
the Conquest, was a portreeve, most probably 
appointed by the crown ; but the nature of his 



XORMAN LONDON. 19 

office cannot now be defined. In 1188, the last 
year of the reign of Henry II., Henry Fitzal- 
■vvyn, ancestor of the present Lord Beaumont, 
was appointed the chief magistrate, under the 
title of bailiff, and enjoyed the dignity for no 
less than twenty successive years. The French 
appellation of " mayor," began to be occasion- 
ally given at the commencement of his long term 
of office, and it soon entirely superseded the 
former Saxon one. In the same year, sheriffs 
were made; and in the year 1199, King John 
distinctly granted to the city the liberty of elect- 
ing for itself these important officers. The same 
monarch, also, in 1215, bestowed by charter the 
right of choosing the mayor, subject only to the 
confirmation of the crown. The importance of 
the city of London at this time, and of the 
officer who bore the title of mayor, is plain from 
his being one of the persons intrusted with au- 
thority to enforce the observance of Magna 
Charta, In the struggle on the part of the 
barons against the king, they were very anxious 
to have the metropolitan city on their side, and 
were fully gratified in that respect ; the part 
which the Londoners took in that struggle for 
liberty tending, no doubt, greatly to discomfit the 
tyrannical monarch, and to show the hopeless- 
ness of the contest in which he was enQ-as^ed. 



80 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

Though not mentioned in any charter, it ap- 
pears from a French chronicle of London, lately 
published, that in the year 1200, twenty-five 
discreet men were chosen to advise for the city, 
together with the mayor, constituting very likely 
the germ of the common council, which has 
since so greatly increased. At first the privilege 
of electing the mayor was monopolized by the 
aldermen ; and the inferior part of the civic com- 
munity, '' small commons," as they were styled, 
had no power in the matter, except to confirm 
the decrees of their superiors. But a change 
was brought about in the year 1272, when the 
small commons succeeded in electing a candi- 
date of their own, named Walter Harvey ; and 
the court of aldermen, overcome by the weight 
of numbers, were obliged to confirm the choice ; 
whence began the rise of the commons' power 
in the city, and their successful opposition to the 
ancient aristocratic ascendency.^ Henry III. 
had, among other proceedings which rendered 
him very unpopular with the citizens of London 
and elsewhere, exacted from them arbitrary con- 
tributions, called talliages, and in the allotment 
of these burdens the civic rulers had, as in the 
days of William the Longbeard, taken care of 

* An amusing account of this is given in Palgrare's Merchant 
and Fri^r 



^'OKMAN LOKDOJS'. 81 

themselves, and thrown an undue amount of the 
vexatious impost upon their humbler brethren, 
while they were loth to pay even their own as- 
sessments. The cause of Walter Harvey's popu- 
larity was his attempt to force the former persons 
to make up their arrears of talliage. 

During the civil wars, in the reign of Henry 
HI., as might be expected from his conduct to- 
wards London, the populace, influenced no doubt 
by their leaders, were the warm partisans of Si- 
mon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who, what- 
ever might be his motives, conferred on his coun- 
try a rich boon by his struggle against despotism, 
and by his summoning the representatives of 
cities and boroughs to the parliament which he 
called. At the battle of Lewies, the Londoners 
fought valiantly under his banner, but some of 
the city aristocrats had employed influence to 
prevent their enlistment under that revolutionary 
standard. The earl, aware of this, had seized 
two of these opponents, and put them in a large 
iron cage, which he brought with him into the 
field of battle. Prince Edward, the king's son, 
gaining an advantage over the rebellious citizens, 
chased them to such a distance as thereby to lose 
the victory, whereupon his enraged followers, on 
their return, seeing the cage unprotected, and 
supposing it contained enemies instead of friends. 



82 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

broke it in pieces, and seizing the unfortunate 
prisoners, cruelly put them to death.* Though, 
after the outburst of democratic zeal under Si- 
mon de Montfort, when the royal power had suc- 
ceeded in suppressing it, the popular party se- 
verely suffered by a suspension of their Hberties 
for the course they had pursued, they by degrees 
recovered themselves, and Walter Harvey's elec- 
tion was only a sign of the channel into which 
civic authority was flowing with a strong current. 
*' Before the close of the reign of Edward I., we 
discern new names among the chief office-bearers 
of the corporation ; the old feudal famihes of 
London gradually disappear from the calendar 
of mayor and sheriffs ; men enriched by the in- 
creasing commerce of the country, were the le- 
gitimate successors to their station and influence 
in civic affairs, and by the accession of Edward 
III., the feudal divisions of the metropolis, with 
the exception, perhaps, of the possessions of the 
church, had ceased to exist.'* 

Notices of the state of commerce in London, 
for more than two centuries after the Conquest, 
are very few and unsatisfactory. No doubt it was 
becoming more and more of a mercantile place ; 
but if we are to be guided in our judgment at 
all by the amount imposed, in the reign of king 

* This is related in the Chronicle of Melrose. 



NORMAX LONDON. 83 

John, upon the city, of a certain talliage, called 
quinzieme, or the fifteenth, a sort of excise levied 
upon merchandise from foreign parts, we should 
form no very high estimate of either its position 
or comparative prosperity. Lynn paid £651, 
Southampton £782, Boston £780, London £836. 
Though one cannot suppose that London and 
these ports stood exactly in this relation to each 
other, yet there could not have been anything 
like the ascendency on the part of the metropolis 
which it afterwards obtained. As regards the 
internal trade of London, it was subject, hke 
that of other towns, to severe injury by royal 
commands to close the shops on account of fairs 
in the neighborhood, whence the king derived a 
considerable revenue in the shape of tolls. In 
1245, Henry III. proclaimed such a fair at West- 
minster, and repeated it four years afterwards, 
thereby entailing great hardship on the shop- 
keepers, and exciting loud complaints. The wea- 
ther on the first occasion happened to be very 
bad, so that not only the goods were spoiled by 
exposure to rain, but the dealers had " to stand 
with their feet sinking in mud, and the wind and 
wet beating in their ears." 

The taste for civic show and gorgeous display 
early manifested itself in the city of London. 
The most imposing of these exhibitions, of which 



84: LO^■DON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

we have any account, in the thirteenth century, 
is that which took place on the man-iage of Henry 
III. with queen Eleanor, in 1236. The royal 
jDair were met by the mayor, aldermen, and prin- 
cipal citizens, to the number of three hundred 
and sixty, appareled in silken robes, embroider- 
ed, riding upon horses richly caparisoned, each 
man carrying a gold or silver cup in his hand, 
in token of the privilege claimed by the city of 
being, in the person of the mayor, the chief but- 
ler at the king's coronation. The streets were 
adorned with silks and various devices, and at 
night they were illuminated with an immense 
number of lights and cressets. 

London, in the days of the early Plantagenets, 
was not remarkable for order. There was no 
system of police. Riots were common ; and 
when the magistrates saw the city in commotion, 
their resource was to ring St. Paul's great bell, 
and summon the adult population to arms. 
These were habitually trained to martial exer- 
cises, and were accustomed periodically to muster 
in great force at Mile End or Cheapside, some 
displaying very handsome accoutrements, and 
others being but indifferently furnished with dress 
and weapons. Such a body of civic guards were 
hardly likely to be very effective in preventing 
or suppressing tumult; often, no doubt, they 



NORMAN LONDON. 85 

helped to increase it. A dreadful outbreak oc- 
curred in 1260 among the goldsmiths, tailors, 
and white-leather dressers, who battled together 
three nights running, and the uproar was not 
quelled till thirty of the leaders were captured 
and hanged. Thieves and bad characters were 
very common, finding encouragement and sanc- 
tuary sometimes by fleeing from one soke to an- 
other. St. Paul's Churchyard was sadly infested 
by the very refuse of the city, whereupon the 
dean and chapter had a strong wall built round 
the edifice, to shut out these vile intruders.^ 

In those unsettled times, strange events took 
place in the history of the civic government ; 
the most remarkable of all, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, was the suspension of the office of mayor 
and the chartered liberties of the city for twelve 
whole years. This commenced in 1285, in con- 
sequence of the refusal of the mayor to render 
to the lord treasurer an account of the manner 
in which the peace of the city had been kept. 
He was also accused of taking bribes from the 
bakers, who were said to have made their penny 
loaves six or seven ounces too light. John Bey- 
ton was appointed royal custos during this inter- 

* For this, and much of the foregoing information, we are in- 
debted to a valuable article in the Archaeological Journal, vol. Iv, 
p. 273. 



86 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

regnum in the municipal authority, but he was 
utterly unable to keep order among the citizens, 
whose pugnacious and turbulent dispositions, per- 
haps, were more than usually excited by the in- 
vasion of their legal rights. Violence, robbery, 
and murder prevailed. To suppress these infa- 
mous proceedings, stringent regulations were 
published. No stranger was to wear a weapon, 
or be seen in the streets after the ringing of the 
curfew. Vintners after that time were to keep 
their shops closed. Fencing schools were to be 
no longer permitted. The aldermen were nar- 
rowly to search their wards, and bring ofifenders 
to justice. As foreigners were implicated in 
many of the villanies practised, no person, not 
free of the city, was permitted to reside therein. 
Many of the citizens, also, were required to give 
securities for good behavior, and some were 
banished for an alleged conspiracy against the 
government. 

CHAPTER IV. 

LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 

As we now pass from Westminster to the Tower 
by water, we look up to those wonderful works 
of art, which throw their well-turned arches 
across the spacious flood. But, at the close of 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 87 

the fourteenth century, when the tide was run- 
ning out, 

"The river glided at its own sweet will," 

uninterrupted in its course by pier and buttress, 
till it reached London Bridge, which, " with wea- 
risome but needful length," bestrode the stream. 
After the work of Peter of Colechurch had been 
completed, accidents befell the structure, which 
threatened to destroy it. In 1212, a dreadful 
fire consumed the houses that had been built 
upon each side. The fire first broke out at one 
end, and then at the other, hemming in great 
multitudes who had assembled on the spot; 
owing to which three thousand persons are said 
to have perished, being burnt, drowned, or other- 
wise destroyed. In 1218, the fall of the bridge 
was expected from blocks of ice, which carried 
away five of the decayed arches. But, after the 
subsequent repairs, this great city thoroughfare 
slips out of historical notice till 1437, whence we 
may infer that no harm befell it during that pe- 
riod. At the close, then, of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, it was probably in good repair, daily crossed 
by loaded wains and busy passengers, by knight 
and noble, merchant and artisan, and men of all 
kinds and grades. In 1390, a space was found 
on it broad enough for a passage of arms and 
solemn jousting between an English and Scotch 



88 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

knight. Two years afterwards, the city authori- 
ties, in all their pomp and state, there welcomed 
Richard II., after one of their quarrels with that 
monarch. St. Thomas's Chapel, still appro- 
priated to religious purposes, witnessed the offer- 
ing of mass and other priestly ministrations ; and 
through the whole of the century tolls were 
levied on the various articles of merchandise 
which were conveyed across the bridge, accord- 
ing to charter granted by Edward I. Hence 
chivalry, commerce, civic government and afifairs, 
the church, and the social condition of the people, 
are all included in the ideas associated with Lon- 
don Bridge in the fourteenth century. This group 
of historical associations we shall illustrate in the 
present chapter. 

Beginning with chivalry, it may be observed, 
that it reached its meridian in England under 
Edward III., who afforded the most zealous 
patronage to the strange intermixture of war, 
gallantry, and religion, and prided himself upon 
being the very pattern and mirror of its form and 
spirit. But throughout the former century, as 
well as this, the sentiments embodied in chivalry 
had found expression. Two classes of knights 
had establishments in London at that period, the 
Knights Templars, who were suppressed in 1314, 
and the Knights of St. John, who long survived. 



LONDON IX THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 89 

The famous Temple Church, now restored in 
perfection, was in its original beauty at the com- 
mencement of the fourteenth century. In the 
immediate neighborhood was a vast pile of archi- 
tecture, including all the appurtenances of a 
monastic establishment — refectory, kitchens, dor- 
mitories, cloisters, and master's apartments, to- 
gether with strong walls, Norman arched gates, 
a broad garden, bounded by the Thames, and 
the court, whose pavement often rang with the 
metal boot of the Templar as he paced along it. 
It was doubtless an imposing sight when the 
knights went forth in procession. They gathered 
in tbe court-yard, wearing their long, white man- 
tles, marked with a blood-red cross ; they there 
mounted their steeds, and the gate into Fleet- 
street opening, tbe train, with lance and shield, 
passed into the quiet highway, where the clat- 
terino' of hoofs and arms would draw the Lon- 
doners from their wooden dwellings to look on 
the chivalrous scene. 

The Knights of St. John had a fine house at 
Clerkenwell, of which the old gateway alone re- 
mains. Besides the building devoted expressly 
to orders of knighthood, there were at the begin- 
ning of the fourteenth century many houses or 
inns, as they were called, inhabited by famous 
individual knights. Castle Baynard, Blackfriars ; 



90 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

the house not far from St. Paul's, called in Ed- 
ward the Third's time the King's Great Ward- 
robe ; the Savoy Palace, with others of less note, 
were of this kind. Residences of the old feudal 
nobility come more and more into notice as the 
century rolls on. Neville's Inn ; Beaumont's Inn, 
near the Wardrobe ; the Erber, on the east side of 
Dowgate-street ; and other abodes of our English 
barons, appear in history and old records before 
the close of the century, after which they become 
much more numerous. These structures, at least 
at the beginning of the period now under review, 
were defended with battlemented walls, could re- 
sist a tumult, could stand a siege ; but before the 
end of that period, though they retained their 
warlike appearance, the grim features of their 
earlier style were somewhat relaxed, and smiles 
of beauty and elegance began to play about the 
oriel windows and ornamented gateways. 

Tournaments were schools of chivalry. One 
of these grand pageants was exhibited in Cheap- 
side in 1329, when the scaffold for the accom- 
modation of the ladies broke down, which so in- 
censed the king that he would have hanged the 
carpenter had not the queen interposed ; but 
one more characteristic of London took place in 
Rogation Week, 1359. The challengers were no 
other than the lord mayor, the sheriffs^ and the 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 91 

aldermen, and they undertook to defend the field 
against all comers. So, at the appointed time, 
they appeared with visors down, armed complete, 
with the city cognizances blazoned on their 
shields and surcoats. Many a knight came for- 
ward to engage with the civic champions, and, 
strange to say, the merchant warriors overcame 
all their foes. The kings of France and Scotland, 
then prisoners in England, were present at the 
spectacle, and proud were the citizens to see 
their own mayor and aldermen, before such spec- 
tators, carry off the prize of arms. But the mar- 
vel was explained, and the rapture of the Lon- 
doners knew no bounds, as the mayor and alder- 
men discovered themselves to be no other than 
Edward and his sons, and nineteen great barons, 
who had condescended to assume the city arms. 
This scene, in addition to the display of chivalry, 
throws hght on the spirit and manners of the age, 
its amusements, the quaintness of its practical 
jests, and the character of its thoughts ; besides, 
also, evidencing the growing power of commerce, 
and the rising influence of London, but for which 
chivalry would never have paid it this decided 
compliment. 

Commerce made great advances in London 
during the fourteenth century, of which we have 
already noticed the lord mayor's tournament as 



92 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

a sign. At the commencement of the period, the 
briskness of trade among the dyers and brewers 
led to their using coal, and consuming it in great 
quantities, in consequence of which, '' the nobility 
and gentry resorting thither, complained thereof 
to the king as a pubHc nuisance, whereby they 
said the air was infested with a noisome smell 
and a thick cloud, to the great endangering of 
the health of the inhabitants ; wherefore a pro- 
clamation was issued, strictly forbidding the use 
of that fuel." But all such prohibitions were 
vain ; busy trade would have its own way, and 
consume coal as it liked, in spite of fastidious fears 
and regal edicts. Two satisfactory proofs of the 
augmenting commercial wealth of London are 
found in the supplies which the city rendered the 
sovereign for carrying on his wars, and the for- 
tunes amassed by individual merchants. In 1 3 1 8, 
London sent five times the number of men fur- 
nished by any other city to the assistance of the 
king against the Scots. In 1 339, the city paid him 
20,000 marks, or £12,385. 135. 4.d. In 1346, 
London supplied twenty-five vessels with six hun- 
dred and sixty-two men for the siege of Calais, 
showing that it was on the increase as a port, 
though it does not stand first on the list of sup- 
plies, Yarmouth having that equivocal honor; 
forty-three vessels, with one thousand and i^inety- 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 93 

five men, were its quota. Perhaps we cannot 
rightly judge of the wealth of a port by its as- 
sessment at that period, as such assessment might 
not be strictly equitable ; but, at any rate, as Lon- 
don stands third in the number of men with 
which it manned its vessels, it must have been 
rising in maritime importance. In 1379, London 
contributed to Richard 11. £5,000; in 1386, 
£4,000 ; in 1397, above £6,000 more. — Hallams 
Middle Ages, chap, ix, part ii. 

As to the wealth of individuals, we may notice 
that, besides the buildings before mentioned, 
which gave London the appearance of a city be- 
sprinkled with forts, there were good, sumptuous, 
and tasteful edifices, inhabited by merchants, 
adorned without by huge timber beams, and 
gables quaintly enriched with carving, and stored 
within with such furniture and comforts as the 
age supplied, and with that substantial good cheer 
for which the age was so famous. At a house 
of such description in the Yintry, the district oc- 
cupied by wine-sellers, (who, by the way, were 
charged in Edward the Third's reign with adul- 
terating their wine, as appears from a royal order 
forbidding it,) there lived the well-known Henry 
Picard. In the year 1363, when he was lord 
mayor, he entertained no less than four crowned 
heads, John of France, David of Scotland, and 



94 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

the king of Cyprus, besides his own sovereign. 
The mayor was fond of games of chance, and 
challenged his guests to play at dice and hazard. 
The kmg of Cyprus was somewhat ruffled, as 
gamesters are wont to be when overmatched, 
and grudged to pay what he had lost. The 
vintner, with the air of a merchant prince, told 
him that he did not covet his gold, but merely 
wished to try his skill, and forthwith returned 
the money. The lady Margaret, too, the mayor's 
wife, in queenly style, entertained the royal 
visitors, and Picard, in addition to his costly cheer, 
gave many rich gifts to the king, and other noble 
knights, "to the great glory,'' remarks master 
John Stow, " of the citizens of London in those 
days." " In 13Y8, John Filpot, some time mayor, 
hired with his own money one thousand soldiers, 
and defended the realm from incursions of the 
enemy, so that in a small time his hired men took 
John Mercer, a sea rover, with all his ships, which 
he before had taken from Scarborough, and fifteen 
Spanish ships, laden with great riches. In 1380, 
he again at his own expense hired ships to assist 
Thomas of Woodstock and others, and released 
the armor which the soldiers had pawned for 
their battles more than a thousand times." 
" This most noble citizen," says Thomas of Wal- 
singham, " that had travailed for the commodity 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 95 

of the whole realm more than all other of his 
time, had often relieved the king by lending him 
great sums of money, and otherwise, deceased in 
1384, after that he had assured lands to the city 
for the relief of thirteen poor people forever." 
Other mayors and aldermen of the same century 
are mentioned by Stow, as remarkable for their 
wealth and hberality. 

With a view to promote the interests of trade 
and commerce, the sovereigns granted certain 
restrictive charters ; particular kinds of handi- 
craft were recognized as mysteries, into which 
persons were not to be initiated, except they 
were of a certain class, and upon certain con- 
ditions. No market was to 1/^ held within seven 
miles of the city circuit. JST foreigner was to 
have a dwelling-house of his uwn, nor to sell any 
wine or wares by retail. 

With Edward II., "we discern the first au- 
thentic mention of the mercantile nature of the 
civic constitution of London, and of the mercan- 
tile qualification requisite in the candidates for 
admission to the freedom of the city. By one 
of a number of articles of regulation, ordained 
by the citizens for their internal government, 
which articles were confirmed by the king, and 
incorporated into a charter, it was provided that 
no person, whether an inhabitant of the city or 



96 LO^'Do:^■ in the oldex time. 

otherwise, should be admitted into the civic free- 
dom, unless he was a member of one of the 
trades or mysteries, or unless with the full con- 
sent of the whole community convened, — only, 
that apprentices might still be admitted accord- 
ino' to the established form. Before this, no 

o 

mention occurs of any mercantile qualification to 
entitle the householder to his admission to the 
corporation." — JVortons Commentaries on Lon- 
don, p. 120. 

In connection wdth the commerce of London 
in the fourteenth century, the guilds, which then 
underwent a change, properly come under re- 
view. They now became generally chartered, 
Edward the Third showing them special favor, 
and indeed enrolling himself as a member of the 
Linen Armorers', now Merchant Tailors' Com- 
pany. Royal grants had been made to some of 
them at an earlier period, but the charters of 
Edward III. are the earliest ones enrolled. The 
first were bestowed on the Goldsmiths, Linen 
Armorers, and Skinners. Then come those of 
the Grocers, Fishmongers, Drapers, Salters, and 
Vintners. They are all recognized as of great 
antiquity, and the privileges secured to them are 
the holding of annual guilds, the making of their 
own laws, the election of their own oflScers, the 
acquisition of property, and the right of search 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 9*7 

through their respective trades. A change took 
place in the name of their officers. Master or 
warden was substituted for that of alderman, 
this title being restricted, as it is now, to the 
head of the city ward. He was the chief execu- 
tive officer, the legislative power being vested in 
the corporate body, a power, the exercise of 
which was directed mainly to the preservation of 
trade secrets, and the regulation of apprentice- 
ships. Besides the master or warden, there was 
a beadle to summon the members, a priest to 
pray for the welfare of the society, a clerk to 
keep the books, a cook, '' that indispensable cor- 
porate officer from the beginning," and certain 
assistants to the wardens in the discharge of 
their duties. All the companies were subject 
to the control of the chief magistrates of the 
city, and cases are on record showing that the 
mayor had power to fine and imprison the war- 
dens at pleasure. 

No accoimts of peculiar costumes, as distinc- 
tive of the companies, appear earlier than the 
year 1345, though in 1329 the citizens of all 
the fraternities who went to meet Edward I, 
were dressed in one livery of red and white. 
At the former of the dates, the grocers resolved 
to wear a dress of their own. A particular uni- 
form soon became customary, and hence the 
7 



98 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

general appellation of livery companies given to 
these ancient brotherhoods. 

The observances of these communities, relating 
to elections, funerals, and state pageants, afford 
lively and striking pictures of the manners and 
spirit of the age to which they belong, but the 
more graphic records of them belong to periods 
subsequent to the fourteenth century. At that 
time, however, they had their festivities, and 
processions to church with their trade banners, 
headed by their priest and beadle. Prayers 
were said for the dead on all these occasions ; 
and when any member died, his obsequies formed 
an object of special care. In addition to the 
ceremonials intermixed with all their proceed- 
ings, the companies themselves were dedicated 
to patron saints. The Fishmongers adopted 
St. Peter ; the Drapers, St. Mary, mother of the 
holy Lamb or fleece ; the Goldsmiths, St. Dun- 
stan, said to have been a brother artisan. '' The 
earliest mention of the companies possessing 
halls is about the time of their being first char- 
tered under Edward III. Some, however, had 
halls or places of meeting long before, as the 
Merchant Tailors, who had a hall at the back 
of the Red Lion, in Basing-lane, before they 
bought the one in Threadneedle-street, of Ed- 
mund Crepin, (1331.) The Weavers, Bakers, 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 99 

Butchers, and other ancient guilds, must also 
have had their halls in very remote times. The 
Saddlers had theirs next the site of St. Martin's- 
le-Grand Colles^e.'"^ These and other meetino-- 
places, particularly of the minor companies, were 
probably at first but mean buildings, judging 
from Stow's description of the original Guildhall 
in Aldermanbury, which he tells us was little 
better than a cottage. The building erected in 
the fourteenth century would be of a superior 
order, but the spacious hall, with open timber 
roof, the lantern in the centre, the painted win- 
dows on the side, exhibiting the emblazonry of 
civic arms, the great cross table at the upper 
end, the reredos or grand screen, the gallery for 
the minstrels, and the appurtenances of kitchen, 
butlery, and bakehouse, with appropriate furni- 
ture and utensils, of all which we read in old 
city records, belong to a rather later period. 

The government of the city and its politics 
next come under consideration. In 1304, the 
first recorder was appointed. In 1314, the king 
attempted to tax the city as part of his royal 
demesne, which the citizens resisted as a viola- 
tion of the rights granted by Magna Charta. 
Four years afterwards, the corporation enjoying 
the favor, and being under the control of the 

* See Herbert's Livery Companies, vol. i., Introduction. 



TOO LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

court, assumed tlie sole right of electing the 
mayor and other officers, and imposed arbitrary 
laws upon the people, to the relief of their 
own pockets, after the fashion of a former 
age. Heartburnings and animosities between 
the hisfher and lower orders were the result, 
which certain formal agreements between them, 
ratified by the monarch, were ineffectual to sup- 
press. Complaints of malpractices against the 
civic rulers appear again, but these petty dis- 
putes are presently lost amidst the clouds of 
political discord and strife, in the reign of that 
weak and unworthy prince Edward II. In the 
conflicts between him and those of his nobles 
who opposed his injudicious favoritism, London 
appears first sending out, probably by force, its 
soldiers under the royal banner against the go- 
vernor of Leeds Castle, then refusing to supply 
the king with men to fight for his cause ; and 
finally taking part with the queen, who was at 
war with her husband. The populace tumultu- 
ously attacked the bishop of Exeter, whom the 
unhappy Edward had appointed custos of the 
city, dragging him out of his palace by the hair 
of his head into Cheapside, where, after a mock 
trial, they executed summary vengeance upon 
him by cutting oft his head. The bishop's bro- 
ther and John i\Iarshall, a friend of the hateful 



LONDON IN THE FUUKTEEN'iii CENTURY. 101 

favorite Spencer, perished in like manner, under 
the hands of popular fury. Riots, arising sim- 
ply out of the lawless state of society, occurred 
in 1328, just after Edward III. ascended the 
throne. Bands of robbers and murderers were 
the instigators and leaders of the disturbance, 
which was put down by a strong eflfort of the 
better-disposed citizens, who executed, without 
ti'ial, the most notorious of the offenders. Eleven 
years afterwards, in a like spirit of fierce deci- 
sion and disregard of constitutional laws, two 
men, who, after fio-htino- with each other at the 
head of their guilds, assaulted the mayor, were 
condemned by him, without jury or any form 
of trial, instantly to be hanged. The king, so 
far from resenting this invasion of his preroga- 
tive, approved of the magistrate's boldness, and 
threatened himself to treat in like manner all 
who should dare to disturb the peace of the 
community. During the reign of this monarch, 
matters seem to have gone on pretty smoothly 
between him and the city ; but a perfect con- 
trast is presented in the reign of the young, 
dissolute, and unprincipled Richard II. The 
rebellion of Wat Tvler, thouo;h it orioinated in 
Kent, had for its principal scene the city of 
London, many of whose inhabitants sympathized 
with this plebeian leader in the demands which 



102 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

he at first made upon the government. The 
Savoy, the residence of John of Gaunt, will be 
ever associated with the horrible burnings and 
outrages there committed by the maddened 
rebels ; the destruction of property, the killing 
of a person who appropriated a piece of plate 
to his own use,* the intoxication of the mob, and 
tlie suffocation of thirty-two of them when in 
that frightful state. Smithfield is equally fa- 
mous for the suppression of the revolt, through 
the daring of Walworth, the lord mayor, who 
slew Wat Tyler. But all this is familiar to 
every English reader. Other strifes, more 
strictly connected wuth the city, are less gene- 
rally known. The Guildhall, which, as before 
noticed, stood in Aldermanbury, and presented 
a different style of architecture from that which 
now graces the scene of civic fights and festi- 
vals, was, in the year 1384, witness to many a 
gathering of the citizens, out of all patience 
with and loudly protesting against proceedings 
which were carried on by the contrivance of the 
king and court. John of Northampton, a man 
of wealth, ability, and public spirit, and withal 
a Lollard, one of the favorers of the venerable 
reformer Wiclif, had been a very popular 
lord mayor, and had occupied the chair two 
years. Strenuously had he striven to improve 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 103 

the morals of the metropolis, and had succeeded 
to some extent. But after the expiration of his 
mayoralty, another and far different character, 
one Sir Nicholas Bramber (a creature of the 
king) was appointed to the chief rulership by 
the court party, contrary to the wishes of the 
commonalty. John of Northampton now ap- 
peared as the leader of the opposition against 
Bramber and his royal patron. A strong party 
supported the former, who marched about the 
city with a great crowd of people, cheering him 
in his way. He was backed by no less a per- 
sonage than John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, 
who disapproved of the court doings in refer- 
ence to the city of London, as well as in other 
matters. Chaucer, too, was among Northamp- 
ton's abettors. The royalists were for a while 
too strong for the reformer, though supported 
by duke, poet, and populace. Northampton 
was seized and imprisoned. A conspiracy was 
formed against the duke of Lancaster, and 
Chaucer fled into exile. Bramber now had it 
all his own way. The city, however, WTithed un- 
der the blow inflicted on its Hberties. It became 
thoroughly disaffected towards Bichard Soon 
he wanted money, and asked for it from the city. 
A refusal was returned. The king said nothing, 
but harbored revenge. A tumult broke out 



10^ LONDOX IX THE OLDEN TIME. 

according to custom, occasioned, in this instance, 
by the bishop of Sahsbury's servant snatching 
a loaf out of a baker's basket, which occurrence 
led to a scuffle. Richard availed himself of the 
opportunity to punish the citizens. The lord 
mayor then in office was sent a prisoner to 
Windsor Castle for not maintaining the peace, 
and some of the aldermen were prosecuted and 
fined. The city charter was virtually abrogated. 
The king appointed magistrates of his own, and 
removed the courts of justice from the me- 
tropolis into the north, where he had taken up 
his abode for a while. The citizens, frightened 
at this, succumbed, threw themselves on the 
royal mercy, wooed the king to return, gave 
him a grand welcome, delighted him with gaudy 
pageants, made the conduits run with claret, 
shouted till they were hoarse, '' Long hve king- 
Richard !" and paid him three thousand marks. 
Yet still he refused to restore them the privilege 
of electing their own mayor. At length, he 
sold it to them for £10,000 ; but, after all, the 
bargain was worse for him than for them, for 
it was one of the things which led to the loss of 
his throne and his life. *' At last, when too 
late," says Maitland, " he was made sensible 
how dangerous it is for a king of England to 
have the city of London for his enemy." 



LONDO^• IN THE rOUKTEENTH CEN^TUKr. lOo 

In noticing the religious associations of the 
capital, let us revisit London Bridge. On a 
fine, clear morning, one might have gazed from 
it on a scene hke that described by Words- 
worth : — 

" A sight so touching in its majesty, — 
The city now doth like a garment wear 
The beauty of the morning. Silent — bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open mito the fields, and to the sky, 
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air." 

If there were no domes and theatres, there 
were towers and temples in abundance, espe- 
cially the latter. London, at the time we arc 
speaking of, was full of churches and monasteries. 
A catalogue of the parochial edifices w^ould 
weary the reader: sufficient is it to say, that 
they beset the streets of the old city every- 
where, tower rising behind tower, spire soaring- 
above spire ; the architecture varying in its age 
and style, from the primitive Saxon down to 
the late and flowery decorated, and in its order, 
from the humblest and plainest structures to 
the most magnificent and elaborate. But the 
most imposing of all the churches was the 
Gothic cathedral of St. Paul, looking down from 
the top of Ludgate, upon smaller sanctuaries, 
and upon the rich conventual edifices within 
the city walls and just beyond the boundaries. 



106 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

Amono' the chief were the followino^ :— The 
priory of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, al- 
ready noticed. The house of the Gray Friars, 
or Franciscans, who settled in London 1225, 
and afterwards had this house founded for them 
in Newgate-street, where Queen Margaret built 
them a beautiful church, beneath whose pave- 
ment the foundress, and other queens, besides 
a number of the nobihty, found their last resting 
place. The monastery of the Black Friars, or 
Dominicans, who first established themselves in 
Holborn, and in 1276 removed to the spot which 
still bears their name, where a magnificent build- 
ing was reared for their use, inclosed by spacious 
walls, having four great gates, within which 
some of the kino-s of Eno-land were received and 
hospitably entertained by the prior. The estab- 
lishment of the White Friars, founded in 1241, 
by Sir Richard Grey, and subsequently enriched, 
as were the former monasteries, by royal and 
other benefactors, but to a less extent. The 
house of the Austin Friars, founded in 1253, and 
that of the Crutched Friars, in 1298. Out of 
these buildings issued priests, monks, and friars, 
in their robes, black, white, or gray, who might 
be seen in every street, mingling with the gayly- 
dressed children of fashion, the belted knight, 
the plain merchant, and the poor artisan ; while 



LOKDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 107 

every now and then some religious procession 
arrested the eyes of the superstitious Londoners, 
and inspired them with awe. The city, indeed, 
was crowded with the signs, symbols, and asso- 
ciations of religion. If the constant presence 
of symbols, and the continued repetition of cere- 
monies, could keep the spirit of religion alive in 
men's souls, the people of the fourteenth cen- 
tury would have been rehgious indeed. But 
the fully-proved absence of all necessary con- 
nection between the two, leaves the religious 
character of the citizens to be determined on 
other grounds. The possession of the form of 
godliness, even where the form is proper and 
Scriptural, without the power, is recognized in 
the Scriptures as a shape of spiritual danger to 
which men are exposed ; and while we remem- 
ber this, we should be ready to apply the truth 
much more earnestly to ourselves than to the 
men of any bygone generation, and eaniestly 
inquire whether we, Christians so called, have 
not a name to live while we are dead. Histori- 
cal justice demands from us the assertion, after 
examining as far as we can into the morality 
and religion of the people of those days, that 
they were wont, for the most part, to associate 
with external observances characters destitute 
of sound virtue as well as spiritual godliness. 



108 LO^^I)ON IN THE OLDP^N TIME. 

The low ebb in the fourteenth century of what 
truly deserves those honored names, is but too 
apparent from the contemporary chroniclers and 
poets. The veiling behind numerous unautho- 
rized ceremonies of the realities of that grace 
of God which, through a living faith in Jesus 
Christ, bringeth salvation, and which teaches us 
to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and to 
live righteously, soberly, and godly in this pre- 
sent evil world, was necessarily and fatally pre- 
judicial. The corruption of the monastic orders 
and of the mendicant friars, the great teachers 
of the day, could not but encourage the vices of 
the age, and inflict a deep injury upon the cause 
of Christianity. Yet, in looking impartially 
upon the signs of those times, we feel warranted 
to hope that all the religious forms of the period 
were not mere formalism — that sincere and 
earnest hearts did by means of them seek to 
worship God, and to express their fear, and faith, 
and love — that, though misguided in many 
things, they did hold to the main verities of 
the Christian faith — and did, with a blessed in- 
consistency, look for acceptance with God, after 
all, only through Christ, the sole ground of a 
sinner's hope, notwithstanding the contradictory 
forms which, through educational prejudice, 
they were led to maintain. 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 109 

Outbursts of superstitious feeling were not 
uncommon in the latter half of the mediaeval 
age. One of these remarkable phenomena was 
exhibited in London in the year 1365. Above 
a hundred and twenty Dutchmen might be 
seen in the streets, wearing hats with red crosses, 
the upper part of the body naked, the lower 
part covered with a linen garment, and each 
person holding in his hand a whip of knotted 
cords. Four of the company walked before, 
and led on a kind of song or chant, in which all 
their miserable associates joined, inflicting upon 
themselves at the same time severe and repeated 
lashes, which drew from their uncovered shoul- 
ders streams of blood. Twice a day in St. Paul's 
Church and in other places, did these flagel- 
lants perform their self-imposed penance. 

Other religious excitements, of a far diSerent 
kind, appeared in the same age. The reformer 
Wiclif, by his earnest preaching of the gospel, 
and by his subsequent translations of the Holy 
Scriptures, produced a great revival of genuine 
religion. Turning away the attention of men 
from the authority of popes and councils, he di- 
rected it to the word of God, as the only au- 
thoritative guide of conscience. Repudiating all 
human and created mediators, he urged his coun- 
trymen to place their whole dependence for sal- 



110 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

vation upon Jesus Christ; and reducing sacra- 
ments from that unscriptural elevation to which 
a superstitious church had long raised them, he 
inculcated upon mankind the Christian duties of 
repentance, faith, and holiness, as the only effec- 
tual means of securing eternal felicity. He 
brought out into public view many of the long- 
neglected doctrines of the gospel — those precious 
tniths, which renew the heart through the grace 
of the Holy Spirit, give peace to the troubled 
conscience, and the hope of eternal life to the 
dejected and sorrowing heart. These doctrines 
spread: many embraced them, and felt their 
peace-inspiring power ; and others, more numer- 
ous, no doubt, who remained strangers to the 
spiritual influence of Wiclif's creed, sympathized 
with him in his endeavors to promote ecclesiasti- 
cal reform, and applauded the bold tone in which 
he attacked the corruptions of the church. Men 
in high places gave him their countenance, and 
interposed with the shield of their friendship 
when he was assailed by his clerical antagonists. 
In 1377, Wiclif was cited to appear in St. Paul's 
Cathedral before Courtney, the bishop of London. 
The duke of Lancaster, and lord Percy, marshal 
of England, with a vast concourse of people, at- 
tended him on the occasion, when the marshal 
spoke in his favor with great energy and zeal. 



LONDON IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. Ill 

Courtney resented this, and declared that had he 
foreseen it he would have prevented his coming — 
a remark which irritated the duke, and led to 
fierce debate between these dignitaries of the 
realm and church. The marshal oflPered Wiclif 
a seat, which further provoked the bishop, and 
at length the proceedings became so tumultuous 
that they were abruptly terminated. Wiclif es- 
caped the fangs of his persecutors, but his two 
distinguished patrons had to suffer for interfe- 
rence. They were unpopular in the city, and 
their treatment of the bishop excited the anger 
of many. In addition to this, Percy soon after- 
wards imprisoned a man, contrary, it was said, 
to the municipal charter, and presently a riot 
broke out, in which the marshal's house was at- 
tacked and ravaged, and the duke's palace in the 
Savoy assailed. The latter, however, was spared 
any injury at this time, and reserved for destruc- 
tion in Wat Tyler's rebellion. 

In addition to civil disturbances, so frequent 
in this century, the hand of the Almighty, by 
the infliction of pestilence, severely chastised the 
citizens. In 1348, the mysterious plague, which 
had come from the East, bearing death on its 
wings, overshadowed London with its blackest 
gloom. The disease raged to such a degree, that 
the common receptacles of the dead were not 



112 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

sufficient to contain the fresh victims of mortahty. 
A new cemetery was opened in Spital Croft, in 
which fifty thousand persons were buried. One 
hundred thousand altogether are computed to 
have perished by this fearful visitation. It re- 
turned again in 1361, when sanitary measures 
were adopted for its mitigation. Slaughter- 
houses were removed out of the city, and the 
blood and entrails of beasts forbidden to be thrown 
into the streets, as had before been the practice. 
Yet the disease committed dreadful ravages, and 
twelve hundred persons within two days died in 
London. Another visitation of a hke character 
occurred eight years afterwards. During the 
two former seasons of calamity, corn became ex- 
tremely cheap, owing to the multitude of the 
consumers who were swept away ; but the last 
time, such was the failure of the harvest and the 
scarcity of food, that though the numbers need- 
ing sustenance diminished, the price of it rose to 
an enormous height. During the plague of 1361, 
wheat sold at two shilhngs a quarter. In 1369, 
it reached twenty-six shillings and eightpence. 



LONDOiir IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 113 

CHAPTER V. 

LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

The annals of the city during the first quarter 
of the fifteenth century, present few matters of 
importance or interest. Disturbances, pageants, 
the granting of charters, and signs of increasing 
commercial and artistic civilization, form the 
staple of the story. Henry lY. expressed his 
gratitude to the Londoners for espousing his 
cause, and maintaining his title to the crown, by 
repealing some forfeitures of civic rights, incurred 
during disputes with former sovereigns, and grant- 
ing them the power of collecting tolls and cus- 
toms in Cheapside, Billingsgate, and Smithfield. 
Immediately after an account of a destructive 
plague in 1407, which carried off thirty thousand 
people, at which time corn fell in price to three 
and fourpence a quarter, we find a record of some 
special public diversions in Clerkenwell, which 
lasted for eight days, and included a play or 
mystery of the Creation of the World, a spectacle 
attended by the nobility and city magnates. 
Thence they went to Smithfield, to witness tilts 
and tournaments, where numerous knights of 
brilliant fame displayed their skill and prowess 
8 



114 LONDON IX THE OLDEN TIME. 

in feats of arms. Then follow notices of riots in 
1410, which originated in a quarrel between the 
servants of two of the king's sons at an entertain- 
ment in Eastcheap. The young princes were ac- 
customed to mingle with the citizens, and often 
mixed in disgraceful scenes, and became involved 
in vulgar broils. Another scene in the same year, 
of a totally different character, in which the king's 
eldest son, prince Henry, appears, is described 
by our chroniclers: ''In the month of March," 
says Maitland, ''John Bradby, alias Badby, a tai 
lor, and follov^^er of Wiclif 's doctrine, was con- 
victed before Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 
of heresy, (so called at that time.) and, he reso- 
lutely persisting in it, was carried to Smithfield, 
and there in a pipe or cask burned to ashes. At 
whose execution was present Henry, prince of 
Wales, who sincerely compassionating the suffer- 
ings of this pious man, was very desirous of 
saving him, and to that end offered him a pardon 
if he would recant before the fire was kindled ; 
which he refusing, he was then tied to the stake, 
and fire put to his funeral pile, the flames whereof 
soon reaching him, occasioned his making a most 
lamentable outcry ; with which the prince was so 
greatly affected, that he immediately commanded 
him to be taken out of the fire, and earnestly ex- 
horted him to renounce his errors, and he should 



LOxN'DON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 115 

be saved ; and as the fire had rendered him im- 
potent, Henry graciously promised to allow him 
three-pence per day, (a very handsome allowance 
at that time,) during life. But this generous 
oflfer of the prince being rejected by the resolute 
martyr, he was reconducted to the flames, and, 
with an admirable constancy, sealed the doctrine 
he had so resolutely defended with his blood.'' 
A nobler victim suffered in the same cause 
not long afterwards. Sir John Oldcastle, lord 
Cobham, was a zealous Lollard, and thereby ex- 
cited the stern displeasure of Henry Y., who, 
though before his accession he had displayed so 
much pity for poor Bradby, showed himself, 
after he had attained the throne, a violent partisan 
of the Church, and a persecutor of those who dis- 
sented from its doctrines. Imprisoned for heresy, 
the nobleman effected his escape, but only to 
suspend for awhile the threatened doom. He 
was charged, v/ithout any evidence but rumor 
and hearsay, with being imphcated in a treason- 
able attempt, which the Lollards, on like evidence, 
were said to have premeditated. Some persons 
assembled in St. Giles-in-the-Fields, in January, 
1414, and on being asked what they wanted, re- 
plied, '' The lord Cobham." That is the only 
ascertained fact in the story of the Lollard rebel- 
lion of that year ; but in consequence of it, many 



116 LONDON IN THE OLDP:X TIME. 

were seized and imprisoned. Oldcastle himself 
was afterwards captured, and experienced the 
fate decreed to heretics, attended with aggra- 
vating circumstances of barbarity. Suspended 
in chains over a slow fire, which was kindled in 
St. Giles, the scene of the reported insurrection, 
he was gradually roasted to death — the hero of 
a purer faith than his benighted countrymen were 
prepared to embrace, a pattern of Christian for- 
titude, and a noble instance of the power of Di- 
vine grace to render the soul superior to the in- 
fluence of terrors, which might well make flesh 
and blood shudder and quail. 

Amidst civil commotions and the dark storms 
of intolerance, the city went on increasing in 
trade and wealth, and showing signs of improve- 
ment. Abandonino' the miserable old buildinof 
in Aldermanbury, where they had held then- 
meetings, the corporation erected the present 
Guildhall, in 1410. In 1415, the first attempt 
was made at lighting the streets of London, 
when the mayor, Sir Henry Barton, ordered 
housekeepers to hang out lanterns, in the winter 
evenings, between Allhallows and Candlemas. 
The watchman, with his long coat, and halberd 
in hand, paced the streets at nightfall, crying 
aloud, "Hang out your lights." In 1419, 
Leadenhall was erected as a public granary, in 



l.ONDOX IX TliK FIFTEENTH CE^'TUllY. 117 

wliicli corn might be stored against a time of 
dearth. A chapel was attached to the structure, 
and, subsequently, endowments were bestowed 
for the support of sixty priests, besides brethren 
and sisters, who were to celebrate mass and 
other offices every market day. In 1423, New- 
gate was rebuilt by the executors of the famous 
Sir Richard Whittington, and conduits were 
erected at Billingsgate, Paul's Wharf, and St. 
Giles, Cripplegate. 

The quarrels between the duke of Gloucester, 
protector of the kingdom, and the bishop of 
Winchester, great uncle to the king, involved 
the city in much trouble. The proud prelate, 
at the head of a number of retainers and fol- 
lowers, approaching London Bridge on the South- 
wark side, was denied admittance by the lord 
mayor, under the command of the duke ; upon 
which Winchester prepared for a conflict, and 
the citizens shutting up their shops and running 
to the bridge, prepared to resist him. Much 
blood seemed on the point of being shed, but 
through the prudent interference of the chief 
magistrate, it was prevented, and peace was 
restored. 

London, during the second quarter of the 
fifteenth century, is portrayed with much graphic 
power in the writings of John Lydgate. He has 



118 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

a piece entitled, "The Cominge of the King out 
of France to London," preserved among the 
Harleian MSS. It relates to the magnificent 
procession of young Henry YI. into the city, in 
February, 1432, after he had been to Paris to 
receive the crovrn of France. The poet exhibits 
a sort of panoramic view of the gaudy pageant 
as it passed over London Bridge : — Forth went 
the lord mayor, clad in rich velvet, with the 
sheriffs and aldermen, in furred cloaks, the color 
of scarlet, each riding on a goodly horse. The 
crafts of the city, in white liveries, accom- 
panied these dignitaries, and foreign merchants — 
Genoese, Florentines, and Venetians — swelled 
the train. Meeting the king in the suburbs of 
South wark, they fell into ranks on either side the 
road, and the lord mayor rode up to his majesty 
and bid him a dutiful and loyal welcome. On- 
ward the grand procession, composed of the 
king and nobles, in glittering armor, and of the 
citizens, with their standards and badges, swept 
along the broad highway of the old Borough to 
London Bridge, which was decorated for the 
occasion with divers quaint pageants. At the 
end of the bridge stood a tower, with an im- 
mense giant, with his sword upreared, as if 
menacing the king's enemies. Another tower, 
hanged and appareled with silk and eloth of 



LONDON IN THE FlFTEENiTI CENTURY. 119 

arras, stood in the midst of the bridge, where a 
most elaborate device was exhibited. Three 
empresses — i^atiire, Grace, and Fortune, by 
name — came forth from this tower, and presented 
to the king gifts, emblematic of science and cun- 
ning, strength and fairness, prosperity and riches. 
Seven maidens, also, on the right hand of the 
three empresses, clothed in v>diite, presented him 
with oflferings ; among the rest, seven doves. 
Other seven virgins, on the left hand, bestowed 
on him donations, emblematical of the seven 
cardinal virtues. All this was significant of the 
character and spirit of the times. In those de- 
vices was expressed an imaginative feeling, a 
love of parable, imagery, and metaphor, then so 
prevalent, and so different from the plain, pro- 
saic, and matter-of-fact habits of the nineteenth 
century. It was superficial and light. Men 
were pleased with pictures of spiritual and moral 
things, but w^ere very far from profoundly re- 
garding the reality they represented. Amidst 
all this pomp, the king entered the city. The 
streets were hung with garlands, and further 
adorned with tapestry, besides exhibiting divers 
sumptuous pageants. These need not be re- 
peated, for when one exhibition has been de- 
scribed, the rest can be easily conceived, as they 
were much alike, turned on the same points, and 



120 LONDON IX THE OLDEN TIME. 

even in detail did not display much fertility of 
invention. 

Lydgate has left another poem, giving an in- 
sight into London life. It is entitled, '' London 
Lyckpenny," (or Lackpenny,) and contains the 
story of a countryman, who came to the metro- 
polis to seek legal redress for some wrong he 
had suffered, but, like many more, went away as 
he came. He entered London through West- 
minster, and the general appearance of the city 
from that point at the time is well sketched in 
the following passage, from Knight's Old Eng- 
land : '' The first of the mansions along the old 
route towards St. Paul's was Durham Place ; on 
a line with it, further on, were Essex House and 
York House, names chronicled in historic and 
poetic pages. The old church of St. Mary 
Strand appears at the bend of the road, on its 
left side. Looking towards the river, we see the 
silver current flowing on the foot of the many- 
arched London Bridge, loaded with houses, 
gates, and chapel. The airy pinnacles of St. 
Mary Overies appear on its right, the Tower of 
London on its left, and nearer the front of the 
picture, old St. Paul's, whose elevated position 
and queenly height and dignity attest the cathe- 
dral of the great metropolis; only, instead of 
the grand Grecian dome that lords it over mo- 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 121 

dern London, a most beautiful, bold, and elegant 
Gothic spire is there seen to pierce the sky." 

The countryman in search of justice, accord- 
ing to Lydgate, as soon as he reaches West- 
minster, is roughly handled by the street thieves, 
who are busy in theu' infamous employment, and 
snatch the hood off the head of the poor tra- 
veler in open day. Flemish pedlars, selling hats 
and spectacles, shouting, "What will ye buy?" 
beset him on all sides ; and at Westminster gate, 
at noon, he sees set out " bread, with ale and 
wine, and ribs of beef, both fat and fine ;" but 
wanting money, the poor man is obliged alike 
to decline the pedlar's ware and the cook's good 
cheer. On he goes to the city, and on reaching 
it, his ears are deafened with London cries — for 
tradesmen then had open stalls, not magnificent 
shops, with plate glass windows : and instead of 
displaying, as now, tickets indicating the cheap- 
ness of commodities, the salesman audibly shouted 
their merits and their price in the wayfarers' 
ears. Strawberries, cherries, and peas, pepper 
and saffron, spices and green ginger, are specially 
mentioned as articles vended near the eastern 
entrance into London. In Cheapside, Lyck- 
penny finds himself among a different class of 
venders. Velvets, silks, lawn, and Paris thread, 
are pressed on his notice ; and so earnest are 



122 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIMP;. 

these traffickers, that they seize him by the hand, 
and drag him into the stalls. At London stones, 
the cries vary ; there he finds the linen draper, 
while men are running about crying " hot sheep's 
feet, and mackerel. '^ He goes to Eastcheap, 
and there again he finds eatables in abundance, 
*'ribs of beef and pies,'* and drinkables too, for 
'' pewter pots are clattering in a heap ;" the 
place also resounds with carols. But at Corn- 
hill, his surprise is great to find his own hood, 
torn off at Westminster, exposed upon a stall for 
sale. The poor man, sickened with the noises 
of London, and disgusted to a greater degree 
with its roguery and thefts, resolves to get away 
as quickly as possible, giving up all further idea 
of litigation, and goes to Billingsgate, and then 
paying the fare of two-pence, is taken in a boat 
to Kent — probably to Gravesend; two- pence, 
according to Lambard, being the fare for that 
distance in the time of Richard IT. 

The object of Lyckpenny's visit, though un- 
accomplished, reminds us of the law courts, and 
of the method of carrying on legal proceedings 
in the metropolis. The Court of Common Pleas, 
after the settlement of Magna Charta, instead 
of following the king wherever he went, became 
fixed at Westminster, which led to the common 
lawyers choosing London as the place of their 



LONDON IX THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 123 

residence and study. Hostels, or inns for the 
lawyers, were established at Dowgate, Fetter- 
lane, and Paternoster-row. When the Temple 
was granted for the use of students in law, it 
superseded the old hostels, and in the fifteenth 
century, Fortescue, a great legal writer of the 
age, mentions the four inns of court now in ex- 
istence : the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, 
Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn, each containing 
two hundred members ; besides ten inns of 
chancery, only one of which, Clifford's Inn, now 
remains. The expenses of studying in these 
inns were so great, that only young men of pro- 
perty were able to incur them, so that the pro- 
fession of the law was confined to the wealthier 
classes. People were accustomed, in those days, 
to meet together in St. Paul's Cathedral for the 
transaction of business, and there the lawyers 
and their clients assembled, after mid-day, when 
the courts were closed. The serjeant-at-law, in 
his scarlet robe, white furred hood, and coif on 
his head, gave advice to those who came to con- 
sult him ; and also instructed his '^ apprentices," 
as they were called, in the lore of the profession. 
Each Serjeant had his pillar, (like the members 
of the stock exchange,) where he daily stationed 
himself, taking notes on his knee. Remains of 
this custom existed in Charles the Second's reign, 



124 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

when barristers, on attaining tlie dignity of Ser- 
jeants, made a procession to St. Paul's, and there 
chose their own pillar. If the country stranger 
in the metropolis had entered St. Paul's Walk, 
as the place of general rendezvous was called, 
to inquire of some legal adviser the course he 
should pursue, certainly, with all this crowd of 
counsel and clients, and the clatter and buzz of 
their busy tongues, he would have been as 
much deafened and confounded as with the 
cries and clamor of Ludgate and Eastcheap. 
The noises of London during this century, as 
aforetime, ever and anon swelled into loud tem- 
pests of riotous conflict; scuffles and battles, 
and even murders in the street, between lawless 
citizens or vagrant strangers, being common- 
place occurrences, as the chroniclers testify. 

One serious disturbance, much more than a 
mere riot, the rebellion of Jack Cade, occurred 
within the period now under review, and may 
be noticed, both for its exhibition of the charac- 
teristics of the people of London at that time, 
and for the warnings it conveys. Assuming the 
name of Mortimer, Cade proclaimed certain 
grievances under which the people labored, and 
stimulated them to seek redress. Gathering a 
number of adherents, he encamped on Black- 
heath, and presented such a formidable array, 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 12o 

that he was encouraged to march on and take 
possession of the city. A common council was 
summoned, and after much debate, it was re- 
solved to make no resistance — a fact which 
seems to indicate that there must have been 
many who sympathized in the enterprise of the 
revolter. Indeed, so strong was the popular 
feeling in favor of his admission, that the lord 
mayor, to pacify the people, committed to New- 
gate one alderman Horn, who ventured to 
oppose the proposition. Entering London in 
triumph, he stiiick old London stone with his 
sword, and exclaimed, '* Now is Mortimer lord 
of this city ;" upon which, forthwith, he began 
practically to assert his lordship, by estabhshing 
a court at Guildhall, arraigning Lord Say, the 
high treasurer of England, and ordering him to 
be taken from the bar to the standard, in Cheap- 
side, where, without allowing him time to con- 
fess to a priest, an executioner struck off his 
head. This was fixed on a spear, and his body 
being tied to the tail of a horse, was dragged to 
St. Thomas Watering. Sir James Cromer, 
sheriff of the county of Kent, shared the like 
fate. With the exception of these outrageous 
acts, Cade committed no violence at first, and 
made strict proclamation that no injury or in- 
dignity should be offered to any citizen of Lon- 



126 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

don. Indeed, so high did this extraordinary 
rebel stand with some, even of the wealthy, that 
Alderman Alalpas and Mr. Gersty gave him a 
sumptuous entertainment. But a lawless mob, 
like that vvhich Cade had collected, was not long 
to be deterred from violence, and presently they 
began to pillage houses, and commit other de- 
predations. This alarmed the citizens, and 
seeing that anarchy, instead of reform, was about 
to ensue, they determined to exclude the insur- 
gents, and defend the bridge. A sanguinary 
conflict followed for six hours between the par- 
ties, at the end of which the citizens remained 
in possession of the bridge. A truce was pro- 
claimed, and pardon was ofl'ered the rebels if 
they would return home. They accepted it, and 
dispersed. Cade, however, altering his mind, 
or mistrusting the royal promise, again set up 
his standard, but in vain. Being forced to flee, 
he was pursued and killed by the sherifi" of Kent. 
The king soon afterwards marched through the 
city, when, to show their loyalty, the Londoners, 
under arms, lined the streets, and the authorities 
caused the heads of ten of the rebels to be ex- 
hibited on the bridge. 

Close upon the record of these scenes of vio- 
lence and blood, which happened in 1450, our 
chroniclers insert in their annals a glowing no- 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 127 

tice of what seemed to them an event of no mean 
importance, namely, the commencement of the 
custom of proceeding to Westminster by water, 
on lord mayor's day. In 1454, they tell us that 
John Korman, the chief magistrate, caused a 
stately barge to be built, in which he was rowed, 
attended by the companies, each of whom had 
also procured a sumptuous vessel for their con- 
veyance in this civic procession. 

In the wars of the houses of York and Lan- 
caster, although the commonalty of England 
seem to have felt little interest in them, (for they 
were mainly a struggle between two factions 
of the nobility, not for any great social right or 
question, but simply for the inheritance of the 
crown,) the city of London was, at times, 
deeply involved, from its metropolitan character 
and importance. 

After the battle of St. Albans, when the 
Roses began to be stained with blood, a recon- 
ciliation was attempted, and each party repaired 
to London, The Lancasterians lodged outside 
the gates ; the Yorkists within. The noblemen 
of that day had large numbers of retainers, 
who accompanied them on grand occasions, and 
now London Avas crowded with these persons, 
wearing the badges of their respective lords. 
'' The earl of Salisbury," says Stow, *' came 



128 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

with five hundred men on horseback, and was 
lodged in the Herber. Richard, duke of York, 
with four hundred men, lodged at Baynard 
Castle. The dukes of Exeter and Somerset, 
with eight hundred men. The earl of North- 
umberland, the lord Egremont, and the lord 
Clifford, with fifteen hundred men. Richard 
Neville, earl of Warwick, with six hundred men, 
all in red jackets, embroidered with rugged 
staves, before and behind, was lodged in War- 
wick-lane ; in whose house there were often- 
times six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every 
tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any 
acquaintance in that house, might have so much 
of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and 
carry upon a long dagger." So threatening was 
the assemblage in the city, that the lord mayor, 
at the head of five thousand citizens, had to 
undertake to keep the peace. Every morning, 
the adherents of York assembled at Blackfriars. 
In the afternoon, the Lancasterians met at White- 
friars ; the primate, and other prelates, being 
employed as messenger between them. But 
the war afterwards went on, and in 1460, War- 
wick, the king-maker, conducted Henry Sixth 
as a captive into his own metropolis. A com- 
promise being effected, and the duke of York 
being acknowledged the heir-apparent, a grand 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 129 

thanksgiving took place at St. Paul's, where the 
king and the duke appeared in state. After 
this hollow reconciliation, war broke out again. 
London declared against Henry, refused to ad- 
mit his army, and welcomed with joy the earl 
of March, who, after the death of his father, the 
duke of York, succeeded to his claims. The 
tables being turned by the changes of war, the 
queen, at the head of the Lancasterians, having 
beat the Yorkists, and advanced to St. Albans, 
the mayor of London dispatched provisions to 
her majesty, greatly, however, to the displeasure 
of the citizens, who seized the carts and all they 
contained, on their way through Cripplegate. 
The royal army was defeated at Mortimer's 
Cross by the earl of March, who immediately 
afterwards advanced to London, and the gentry 
flocked there to welcome him. While Falcon- 
bridge was haranguing the people in the fields 
at Clerkenwell, on the title of the young prince, 
then in his eighteenth year, and recommended 
by his graceful and accomplished manners, a 
loud burst of acclamation recognized him as 
England's sovereign, under the title of Ed- 
ward jy. This election by the populace was 
followed and confirmed by a meeting of lords 
and commons at Baynard Castle. 

Edward, to show his gratitude to the city, 



130 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

conferred a new charter, in wliich he confirmed 
old privileges, and added some fresh ones; 
amongst which, the most important was that of 
constituting the mayor, recorder, and all the al- 
dermen who had passed the chair, justices of 
the peace, and they, or any four of them, justi- 
ces of oyer and terminer. 

Edward was intensely fond of dress, and the 
taste of the sovereign spread through the realm, 
and specially encouraged the inhabitants of Lon- 
don, who were already smitten with the same 
passion. Sumptuary laws were enacted to re- 
press the popular extravagance in this respect, 
and to keep up the outward distinctions of 
rank. The clothing of the merchant and ap- 
prentice was minutely defined, and a standard 
of dress was prescribed even for the mayor and 
aldermen ; they were to be appareled accord- 
ing to the degree of a knight and his esquires. 
A curious practice in the matter of costume 
is illustrated by a city proclamation, in 1465, 
which enjoined that the beaks of boots and 
shoes should not exceed two inches in length, 
upon pain of excommunicaticni and forfeiture of 
twenty shillings. 

Frequently do we find, throughout this cen- 
tury, records of ci\ic processions, in all the bra- 
very of silk, satin, and velvet, with badges and 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 131 

ornaments of silver and gold. The companies 
greatly advanced in the splendor of these exhibi- 
tions on their annual election days, as well as in 
the profuseness, and, as was then thought, the 
refinement and delicacy of their entertainments. 
The tables groaned under the baron of beef, 
brawn, fat swan, boar, conger, and sea-hog ; 
while spice, bread, hippocras, and comfits, with 
'^subtil ties," cunningly wrought, formed the 
lighter refections and the showy garniture of 
the banquet. Edward lY., Richard III., and 
Henry VII., were all in turn welcomed in the 
city by long troops of men on horseback, richly 
clothed and accoutred ; but just after the death 
of the first of these monarchs, a far different 
procession, reflecting little credit on the depart- 
ed prince, excited the attention and called forth 
the remarks of the citizens, as the celebrated 
Jane Shore did public penance, walking before 
the cross, with a wax taper in her hands, and 
clothed only in her kirtle. Eleanor Cobham, 
the wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in 
the early part of the century, had a like perfor- 
mance assigned to her as the penalty of her im- 
moralities. 

Gatherings of citizens, not to gaze on proces- 
sions, regal or penitential, but to raise their 
voice upon matters of the highest import, took 



132 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

place in those times. The elevation of Edward 
to the throne by the aid of the populace has 
been already noticed. Richard III. sought to 
cover the usurpation of his nephew's crown by 
a similar sanction. A sermon on St Paul's 
Cross by Dr. Shaw, in favor of Richard's suc- 
cession, not having the desired efifect, an assem- 
bly of citizens was convened at Guildhall, 
where the duke of Buckingham exerted all the 
powers of his oratory to call forth acclamations 
from the crowd in support of the protector's 
ambitious design. Though only a few shouts 
from the vile rabble, who had mingled with the 
respectable citizens, could be elicited by this at- 
tempt, they were construed into an acknow- 
ledgment of the usurper's title ; and this mock 
election w^as speedily followed by the dark 
drama of the young princes' murder in the 
Tower — one of the most atrocious acts of cruel- 
ty with which even that old feudal pile, gloomy 
as are its annals, has ever been associated. 

While the ambition of princes was bent on 
the acquisition of a crown, without heeding the 
obstacles which justice set in the way, the ava- 
nce of merchants was intent on the attainment 
of wealth, little regardful of any interests but 
their own. Not only were the London commer- 
cial men both jealous of their foreign rivals, who 



LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 133 

had taken up their ahode in the city, and reso- 
lute in obtaining the interference of parliament 
for the suppression of any such freedom in 
trade, but they also passed in common council a 
law which prohibited any of the citizens from 
carrying their goods to any fair or market out 
of London. In Salisbury, Bristol, Oxford, Cam- 
bridge, Nottingham, Ely, and Coventry, fairs 
were held, '' where," says the act of parliament 
which repealed the London restriction or de- 
mand, "lords spiritual and temporal, abbots, 
priors, knights, and squires, gentlemen, and 
your said commons of every country, have their 
common resort, to buy and purvey many things 
that be good and profitable, as ornaments of 
holy church, chalices, books, vestments, and 
other ornaments for holy church aforesaid ; and 
also for household, as victual for the time of 
Lent, and other stuff, as linen cloth, woolen 
cloth, brass, pewter, bedding, iron, flax, and 
wax, and many other necessary things, which 
might not be foreborne among your liege peo- 
ple." The act introduces us to the shops and 
markets of the period, and brings before us the 
wares and the personages, military, ecclesiasti- 
cal, and civil, who frequented such marts ; and 
also proves the high position of London as a 
place of trade, forasmuch as it appears that the 



134 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

country markets were dependant for their sup- 
ply on that as the parent emporium. 

Increasing commerce produced corresponding 
wealth, and the London of that day, though in 
this as in other respects unworthy of compari- 
son with the London of our times, was continu- 
ally growing richer and richer. Petty rivalries 
among the men of money and civic rank occurred, 
as the natural consequence of their rising for- 
tunes, in connection with the innate vanity of 
human nature, of which a curious example oc- 
curs in the city annals for 1479. Sir Bartholo- 
mew Jones, the mayor, was kneeling at St. Erken- 
wald's shrine, St. Paul's church, when Robert 
Byfield, one of the sheriffs, came and knelt by 
his side. The mayor, with great warmth, 
asked his fellow-worshiper how he could be 
guilty of such an indignity towards him, plainly 
showing that the city magnates had been on no 
very good terms, and that the conduct of the 
sheriff was, for some reason, deemed very 
insulting. A quarrel ensued, and the matter 
was brought before the court of aldermen, 
by whom the offender was amerced in the 
sum of fifty pounds, for his rude deportment, 
to be appropriated towards repairing the city 
conduits. An odd exercise of feudal-like 
power on the part of the civic rulers occurred in 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 135 

the following year, when one Robert Denys 
was fined twenty pounds for presuming to 
marry an orphan in the city without the license 
of the corporation. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LONDON AT THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 

HoLiNSHED describes London in the sixteenth 
century, as presenting a mean appearance in 
comparison with most foreign cities. The pub- 
lic structures, not excepting the finest monaste- 
ries and churches of which it could boast, never 
rivaled the magnificent edifices of the continent ; 
and the houses, still built chiefly of wood and 
clay, each story projecting over the other, till 
the opposite sides of a street, in many cases, 
left but a narrow opening for the light of day, 
exhibited an aspect as poor as it was perilous. 
The highways were still in a deplorable condi- 
tion, '* very foul, and full of pits and sloughs ;" 
and the interior of the dwellings of the common 
people was devoid of comfort, when even the 
abodes of the rich and noble were scantily and 
clumsily furnished, and the floors of the apart- 
ments strewed with rushes. The uncleanliness 



136 lo2sdo:n ix the olden time. 

of the city, owing to the want of proper ventila- 
tion and a good supply of water, was greatly 
increased by the habits of the citizens. Eras- 
mus, who visited London duiing the first quar- 
ter of the sixteenth century, informs us in one 
of his letters, "that the rushes on the floors 
were rarely renewed, fresh layers being placed 
over the old ones, and the whole remaining for 
perhaps twenty years, so as to form a sohd 
pavement, including deposits of fish bones, frag- 
ments of meat, and other filth not to be men- 
tioned." 

Under such circumstances, it was to be ex- 
pected that the health of the community would 
very greatly suffer, and there cannot be any 
doubt, to say the least, that the fearful epidem- 
ics which so often prevailed in the metropolis, 
were greatly increased in their virulence and 
fatal effects by the utter disregard of all sanita- 
ry precautions. In the year 1500, a plague 
carried off no less than thirty thousand of the 
inhabitants, and so alarmed the court that they 
removed from London ; but the calamity befall- 
ing other parts of the country at the same time, 
after repeated endeavors to escape it by jour- 
neying from place to place, they repaired to 
France, whence the monarch wrote to the lord 
mayor a letter expressive of his regard, and 



LONDOJS' ERA OF THE REFORMATION. IS*? 

descriptive of the hospitable treatment he had 
received from the French king. 

In spite, however, of filth and disease, the 
city was the frequent scene of gay shows and 
pageants of all kinds, and never more so than 
during the reign of the last of the Henrys. 
The processions of the companies continued ; 
and the annual lord mayor's show, in 1507, re- 
ceived an important appendage in the institu- 
tion of a splendid banquet at GuOdhall, as well 
as in the proceeding of the corporation on 
horseback to take barge to Westminster. 

Besides civic exhibitions of this kind, ecclesi- 
astical ones very frequently took place. Every 
Childermas-day, a very profane pageant was 
performed in St. Paul's Cathedral, when a boy, 
dressed up in pontificals, aped a bishop, and, for 
the indecent burlesque and extravagances in 
which he and his companions indulged, received 
tlie ofibrings of the people ; while the whole af- 
fair proceeded with the connivance, if it did not 
receive the express countenance, of the ecclesias- 
tical dignitaries. 

A usage less known, was that of a procession 
to the cathedral altar, in order to present a doe 
in winter, and a buck in summer, to the patron 
saint. The offering was received by the dean 
and chapter, who signalized the occasion by 



138 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

wearing garlands of flowers, in addition to their 
sacred vestments. The animal was baked, and 
distributed among the canons resident, but the 
head, fixed on a pole, was carried out in due 
form at the west door, when the keeper who 
brought the game blew his horn, and was an- 
swered by his companions. He received Hxe 
shillings, and they fourpence each, the whole 
party being regaled with substantial cheer, 
while loaves of bread, bearing a picture of St. 
Paul, were distributed among them. 

Christmas was a season of great hilarity 
throughout the kingdom, and especially in the 
metropolis. The lord mayor's fool, or lord of 
misrule, as he was called, superintended the 
sports of that long holiday, lasting from All- 
hallows-eve to Candlemas-day. During this 
space there were curious disguisings, masks, and 
mummery. Every man's house, and each 
church especially, was decked with holly, ivy, 
and bays. The conduits and street standards 
were also garnished with evergreens ; and 
thus the beauties of spring were brought into 
the domain of winter, and London must have 
worn a cheerful and picturesque appearance on 
a clear, frosty day, when the winter sun shone 
faintly, but smilingly, on the Christmas-keeping 
citizens. 



LONDOJ? ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 139 

Two other festivities are specially noticed by 
London chroniclers, that on May-day, and the 
setting of the city watch on Midsumnaer-eve. 
.Henry YIII. on both occasions manifested his 
love of pageantry, and promoted the good opin- 
ion which, for his bluff manners, he obtained from 
his subjects in the early portion of his reign. Stow 
tells a story, often related since, of the king going 
in the dress of a yeoman of the guard, to see the 
procession of the city watch on the Midsummer- 
eve of 1510, and of his taking his queen to 
Cheapside on the eve of St. Peter following, to 
see the same thing repeated. This watch was 
an old institution, dating back as far as the 
reign of Henry III. When London was so 
beset with thieves as it was during the mediae- 
val period, the people felt that some sort of 
pohce was necessary, and they adopted the 
very rude and inefficient plan of having a party 
of horsemen and others to patrol the streets. 
In an age which was distinguished by the love 
of pageants, this arrangement for guarding the 
city was sure to be connected with some sort 
of display; and the setting of the city watch 
was accordingly raised, once a year, into a 
grand exhibition of civic splendor. Stow has 
with special minuteness described the scene 
which Henry and Catherine went to witness, of 



140 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

which the following is Mr. Knight's account: 
" In the open space under the city wall was an 
enormous bonfire, which was reflected from the 
huge steeple of St. Paul's. Looking up the 
hill, there was another bonfire, in the open 
space before the cathedral, which threw its 
deep light upon every pinnacle of the vast edi- 
fice, and gleamed in its many windows, as if a 
thousand tapers were blazing within its choir 
and transepts. The street was full of light ; 
over the doorways of the houses were lamps of 
glass, with oil burning in them all the night ; 
and some hung out branches of iron, curiously 
wrought, containing hundreds of lamps lighted 
at once. Over the doors hung the delicate 
branches of the graceful birch, with leaves of 
lilies and St. John's wort, and there were sus- 
pended pots of green orpine. The galleries of 
the houses and the windows were filled with la- 
dies. Tapestry floated from the walls. Then 
came a loud sound of trumpets, and a greater 
light than that of the flickering bonfires was 
seen in the distance. Onward came the march- 
ing watch, wending into Cheap, from the httle 
conduit by St. Paul's Gate." — London, vol. 1. 
Nine hundred and forty cressets, or torches in 
frames of iron — of which there are specimens in 
the armory of the Tower — threw a blazing 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 141 

light over the streets. Thousands of eyes 
peered out of the windows, and looked down 
from the high-gabled roofs on the glittering 
show. Mingled with the cresset-bearers came on 
two thousand men of the marching watch, some 
mounted and some on foot. There were demi- 
lancers, gunners, archers, and pikemen. Fol- 
lowing these came the constables of the watch. 
Then came the waits of the city, and morris- 
dancers, and then the mayor himself, on horse- 
back, attended by his sword-bearer, henchman, 
and footmen. 

Henry and his queen were much delighted with 
this exhibition, and, in 1515, we find them mix- 
ing with their loyal subjects in the games of May- 
day. At this season, the inhabitants of a parish, 
or of two or three parishes united, were wont to 
wander away to the old woods, which still fringed 
the precincts of the metropolis, and spend the 
whole night in cutting down branches, and pre- 
paring the May-pole. Yery early on the May 
morning just mentioned, Henry and Catherine 
went out to Shooter's Hill, and there an enter- 
tainment was provided for their majesties, repre- 
senting Eobin Hood and his archers, in green 
jackets and hoods, with bows and arrows. The 
archers displayed their skill, and their majesties 
were escorted by them into a wood, where was 



142 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

found an arbor, with a hall and great chamber, 
covered with flowers and sweet herbs ; and, de- 
parting thence, a rich chariot, drawn by five 
horses, appeared, a lady being seated on each 
horse, and bearing some symbolical character 
and name. The company concluded the pageant 
by saluting the king with divers songs, and then 
escorted him to Greenwich. On these occasions, 
the May-pole was dragged into the city by forty 
yoke of oxen, garlanded with nosegays, and ac- 
companied by gaily-dressed multitudes, who 
elevated the lofty floral and flag-covered standard 
in front of the church of St. Andrew, which, from 
being exceeded in height by this ornament, was 
called St. Andrew's Undershaft. Dancing round 
the May-pole, and other amusements, closed the 
day. 

Archery was frequently blended with the May- 
day pastimes, and Henry zealously promoted its 
cultivation. He instituted a guild of archers, of 
which he appointed a master and other officers, 
granting them the right of shooting in certain 
parts of the city and suburbs, and bestowing an 
indemnity on any one who might, in the exercise 
of the art, by accident, injure his companions, 
provided that, on drawing his bow, he shouted 
out the word ** Fast r So warmly attached had 
many of the citizens become to this amusement, 



LONDON — ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 143 

that when, some time before this guild was formed, 
the inhabitants of Hoxton and Ishngton, and the 
neighboring villages, inclosed for their own use 
some grounds which had been occupied by the 
archers, and otherwise attempted to put down 
their recreation, the latter tumultuously as- 
sembled, with pickaxes and spades, to level the 
hedges and ditches, and recover what they deem- 
ed their pubhc rights. Not without much trou- 
ble was the riot put down, nor did the mayor 
escape a reprimand from the monarch for allow- 
ing the peace to be thus broken. 

A terrible riot on one of these occasions brought 
the observance to a close. Much ill-will had long 
existed between the London citizens and the re- 
sident foreigners. A rumor prevailed just before 
the May-day of 1517, that the people intended 
on that festival to slay the aliens. Precautions 
were consequently taken to prevent an outbreak ; 
but the harsh treatment by a magistrate of two 
apprentices, who were playing at bucklers on the 
May morning, so excited their comrades, that, 
rushing through the streets, shouting, " 'Pren- 
tices ! Clubs !" they gathered a vast concourse 
together, and a riot ensued. Much damage was 
done to property, and the tumult was not quelled 
without the capture of about three hundred in- 
surgents, many of them very youthful. But an 



144 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

act of royal grace was performed towards them, 
which was rapturously received by the prisoners. 
They were publicly pardoned by the king, after 
the halter had been fastened round their necks ; 
whereupon those not apprehended, but guilty of 
the riot, slily mingled with their companions in 
the like guise, to share with them in the benefit 
of the act of amnesty. The May -day festivity 
was stopped, and not renewed till some time af- 
terwards, when it appeared shorn of much of its 
former pomp, and was at length extinguished. 

Such festivities as those above described, how- 
ever they may look through the haze of antiquity, 
and in the descriptions of their admirers, possess- 
ed nothing which could recommend them to the 
Christian or the moralist, connected as such festive 
doings are with mere worldliness, and with much 
of vulgarity and vice. The great frequency of 
such amusements had a tendency to promote idle- 
ness and frivohty, and to remove from men's 
minds serious ideas of life. We may be allowed 
to add, that the amusements of such a being as 
man should be tempered and chastened by the 
consideration of the high and holy purposes of 
his creation, relations, and destiny. Amusement 
should be but a brief relaxation, and that purified 
by virtue and sobered by religion, preparing the 
raind for a fresh bracing up of its energies for 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 145 

the perfonnance of life's grave duties, and the 
accomplishment of life's glorious ends, in con- 
formity wkh the mind and will of our Creator and 
Saviour. 

Looking at the picture of London, as drawn 
by some, one might imagine that, in the times 
we now speak of, the people found life one long 
May-day, or summer's night dream; but sober 
history teaches us that, in many instances, it was 
far otherwise. While not a few of the multitude 
unknown found it a season of distress, poor queen 
Catherine of Arragon signally felt the bitterness 
of her reverse, and her successor in Henry's af- 
fections drank still deeper of the same cup of 
woe. Gay, indeed, was the procession of Anne 
Boleyn through the city, after being conducted 
from Greenwich by water in a stately barge, with 
a vast attendance of the gayly-decorated corpora- 
tion and companies. She sat in a gorgeous litter, 
covered with a corresponding canopy, her beauty 
almost concealed amidst the blaze of brilliants 
which studded her dress. The magnates of the 
land, with their respective insignia, and ladies of 
highest rank, in chariots and on horseback, crowd- 
ed in a long and dazzling train before and after the 
royal bride, proud of the honor which they 
thought they derived from honoring her. Poor 
Anne Boleyn! Where was she soon to spend 
10 



146 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

her last days, exchanging the joyous shouts of 
the citizens for their disregard or pity ? Go to 
the Tower — to the cold, dark, and unfurnished 
cell, with its rough stone walls, and its narrow 
casement, which may be found in the third story 
of the Beauchamp Tower ; and it may be seen. 
There, as tradition says, the victim of Henry's 
passion spent her time after her fall, just previous 
to her being dragged to perish under the heads- 
man's ax, in the square on which she looked down 
from her little window. Such illustrations of the 
vanity, the changes, the sorrows, the crushing 
calamities of this life, are not few in connection 
with London, and especially with the Tower. 

Imagined troubles sometimes threw a gloom 
over the city, and the citizens were called away 
from their pageants and pleasures, and their busi- 
ness, by superstitions which strangely tyrannized 
over their minds, and disturbed their peace. In 
the year 1523, the astrologers of London pre- 
dicted, that on the 1st of February, 1524, the 
Thames would overflow, and wash away ten thou- 
sand houses. The prophecy was reiterated till 
it was believed. As the time drew near, people 
became so alarmed, that many families packed 
up their goods, and removed out of the city. It 
is calculated that, by the middle of January, 
nearly twenty thousand persons had left it. 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 147 

Among those who were most alarmed was the 
prior of St. Bartholomew's. He resolved to take 
up his abode at Harrow-on-the-hill, where, at a 
very great expense, he erected a sort of fortress, 
in which to shut himself and brethren during the 
prevalence of the floods. Thither he removed a 
week before the expected day, and took care to 
secure expert rowers, to be available in case 
of emergency. At last the awful morn, sup- 
posed to be big with the fate of ten thousand 
houses, dawned in the east, and anxious crowds 
stationed themselves within sight of the river, 
to watch the rising of the waters. But the water 
would not rise beyond the usual high-water mark, 
and the tide ebbed as peacefully as it had flowed. 
The crowds were not yet assured of their safety, 
and so they waited, with undiminished anxiety, 
till the tide flowed again. All went on quietly 
and regularly as before, whereupon the people 
began to grow clamorous, and some one declared 
that it would serve the astrologers but right to 
duck them in the river, a proposition which was 
favorably received. But the false prophets in- 
vented an excuse, which allayed the popular fury. 
The stars were right, they said, after all ; it was 
they, poor, erring mortals, who were wrong. The 
inundation would most certainly take place, as 
the stars had foretold ; ten thousand houses in 



148 LONDON IX THE OLDEN TIiME. 

London would assuredly be washed away by the 
Thames ; but they had made a slight error in 
the date — an error of one figure only — for they 
had reckoned a five instead of a six, and thus 
fixed the date of the catastrophe a whole century 
too early ! London was, therefore, safe until 1624, 
and there was no cause of alarm for the present 
generation. [Abridged from Mackeys "Streets 
of London.") It is remarkable how easily men 
are alarmed by the terrors of superstition, while 
they remain perfectly indifferent to those real 
grounds of apprehension which their spiritual 
condition before God, according to the warnings 
of revelation, infallibly supply. Many an enthu- 
siast trembles before the vain imaginations of his 
own excited mind, or the unwarranted fore- 
bodings of others, and at the same time continues 
blind to the hand which points to everlasting per- 
dition, and deaf to the voice which conjures him 
to flee from the wrath to come, and to believe in 
an all-sufficient Saviour. 

A real, but less terrifying evil than the pre- 
dicted flood, impended over the city three years 
afterwards, when the proud Wolsey, the king's 
favorite and chief minister, sought to prostrate 
the chartered liberties of the metropolis, by im- 
posing upon the citizens an arbitrary taxation in 
the name of the king. With a firmness which 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 149 

did them honor, as the conservators of the rights 
of posterity, the corporation withstood the at- 
tempt. Beaten oflf from his first ground, the 
cardinal endeavored to obtain the needed amount 
in the shape of a benevolence, seeking contribu- 
tions from the mayor and aldermen singly. But 
with undiminished determination, they resisted 
the design till it was forced to be abandoned. 
Wolsey had often displayed his king-like splendor 
at York House, Charing, and in London ; and a 
display which exceeded all that went before oc- 
curred in 1527, when the cardinal was on his 
way to France, passing through London with a 
retinue of mules, covered with velvet, attended by 
a cavalcade of twelve hundred horsemen, all be- 
longing to his household, and numbering among 
them the chief of the nobility, lay and spiritual. 
But this outburst of splendor was the ray of his 
setting sun ; he soon declined in the royal favor, 
forfeited all his honors and wealth, and in the 
death scene, at Leicester Abbey, dropped, too 
late for himself, his well-known lamentations over 
a life devoted to the world and to his prince, 
rather than to religion and his God. 

In connection with Wolsey and the city of 
London, a circumstance is recorded, illustrative 
of generous attachment and of deserved reward, 
and affording a glimpse of the serious and nobler 



150 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

side of men's lives in those days. Sir William 
Fitz-William was alderman of Bread-street Ward, 
and was the ancestor of the noble family who 
still bear the name ; the cardinal had been his 
patron ; but when the former fell from his high 
estate, the latter clave to him in adversity, and 
afforded him honorable entertainment at his 
house, in Milton, Northamptonshire. Sir Wil- 
liam was called before the king, and asked, '* how 
he could harbor the king's enemy, and show him 
such hospitality." "Because he has been my 
master, and the means of my greatest fortune," 
was the reply. Touched by this answer, Henry 
remarked, that he had few such servants, and 
immediately knighted him, conferring on him at 
the same time the additional dignity of a privy 
counselor. A man who would thus show a 
high-principled devoted ness to a benefactor in 
adversity, and receive him with cordial love 
when the world shook him off, though only what 
every man in similar circumstances should do, is, 
alas ! so rare a character, that, when met with 
in history or daily life, he deserves to be praised 
and honored. 

A further example of generous feeling and its 
reward, but in a different way, occurs in the 
civic annals of 1536. Sir WilUam Hewitt was 
an alderman and clothworker of great wealth, 



LONDON' ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 151 

living in a house on London Bridge. His little 
daughter, Anne, was one day playing at the 
window with her nurse, when by accident she 
fell out, and was plunged into the deep, rushing 
stream below. Sir William had an apprentice, 
who, seeing the peril of his master's child, leaped 
after her, and saved her life at the hazard of his 
own. He had at once the approbation of his 
conscience for this heroic act, but when time had 
passed on he had an additional recompense. 
The little Anne grew up into womanhood, and 
was admired by the rich and great. Even the 
earl of Shrewsbury offered her his hand : " No," 
said the alderman, " no ; Osborne saved her, and 
Osborne shall have her;'' and so he did. Os- 
borne was afterwards lord mayor, and received 
knighthood from queen Elizabeth, and from him 
have descended in a direct line the dukes of 
Leeds. But London in the sixteenth century 
possessed characters of a far nobler class than 
these. 

The moral and religious condition of the me- 
tropolis had long shown the necessity of a re- 
formation in the church, and of the substitution 
of the pure word of God, and the preaching of 
the gospel, for the superstitious observances and 
destructive errors of Popery. The translation 
of the Scriptures, and their wide circulation, to- 



Id2 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

gether with the faithful exhibition of the truth 
from the pulpit by the Reformers, were the 
great means of producing the ecclesiastical and 
spiritual revolution of the sixteenth century, with 
which many characters, scenes, and incidents in 
London are closely connected ; and of all the in- 
cidents we relate, those which involve the in- 
terests of true religion are the most momentous. 
For v/hat are the achievements of war, the gains 
of commerce, the progress of artistic civilization, 
and the privileges of chartered liberty, compared 
with the true wealth, dignity, and freedom, which 
the pure faith of the gospel confers upon all its 
possessors ? 

William Tyndale, the man who, above all others, 
most labored in the work of Bible translation, 
and left behind him the rich fruit of holy toil in 
that department, came up to London in 1524, 
bent upon this kind of work, as the special mis- 
sion which the will of God had appointed him 
to accomplish. He has afforded us in one of his 
works, in addition to proofs of his holy devoted- 
ness, a general description of the treatment he 
met with in the metropolis, and the state of 
things he witnessed there. Turmoiled, as he 
tells us, by the Gloucestershire priests, and hear- 
ing that the bishop of London was a patron of 
sacred literature, he came, hoping to be helped 



LONDON — ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 153 

in his object. ''And so," he says, "I gat me 
to London, and through the acquaintance of my 
master, came to Sir Harry Gilford, the king's 
grace's comptroller, and brought him an oration 
of Isocrates, which I had translated out of Greek 
into English, and desired him to speak unto my 
lord of London for me, which he also did, as he 
showed me ; and willed me to write an epistle 
to my lord, and go to him myself, which I also 
did, and deUvered my epistle to a servant of his 
own, one William Hebilthwayte, a man of mine 
old acquaintance. But God (which knoweth 
what is within hypocrites) saw that I was be- 
guiled, and that that counsel was not the next 
way unto my purpose ; and therefore He got 
me no favor in my lord's sight. Whereupon 
my lord answered me, his house was full, he 
had more than he could well find, and advised 
me to seek in London, where he said I could 
not lack service. And so in London I abode 
almost a year, and marked the course of the 
world, and heard our praters — I would say our 
preachers — how they boasted themselves and 
their high authority ; and beheld the pomp of 
our prelates, and how busy they were, as they 
yet are, to set peace and unity in the world, 
(though it be not possible for them that walk 
in darkness to continue long in peace, for they 



154 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

cannot but either stumble or dash themselves at 
one thing or another that shall clean unquiet 
them altogether,) and saw things whereof I de- 
fer to speak at this time ; and understood at the 
last, not only that there was no room in my lord 
of London's palace to translate the ISTew Testa- 
ment, but also that there was no place to do it 
in England, as experience doth now openly de- 
clare." 

But that God who inclined the widow of 
Zarephath to receive and entertain the man of 
God, with her barrel of meal and cruse of oil, 
raised up a friend for Tyndale in a London citi- 
zen, whose ample means enabled him to assist 
the Reformer in his heaven-born projects : this 
was alderman Humphrey Monmouth. He had 
heard Tyndale preach at St. Dunstan's church, 
and sympathizing in his religious views, and 
feeling an admiration for the man, he offered 
him assistance, which was accepted, and the 
translator was received into the alderman's fa- 
mily. " And there he lived, like a good priest, 
as methought. He studied most part of the 
day and of the night at his book, and he would 
eat but sodden meat by his good will, nor drink 
but small single beer." The man who bore this 
testimony to Tyndale was himself a pattern of 
much excellence ; and Latimer, in one of his 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 155 

sermons, has a passage relating to him, which, 
while it shows the beautiful influence of the re- 
formed doctrine on the mind of one of its early- 
disciples, discloses a scene in the private life of 
a Londoner, more worthy of being preserved 
than many a more imposing one, which figures 
prominently in the history of the citizens. 
*' When I was in Cambridge," says the preacher, 
" master George Stafford read a lecture : there 
I heard him, and in expounding the Epistle to 
the Romans, coming to that place where St. 
Paul saith, *We shall overcome our enemy with 
well-doing, and so heap up hot coals upon his 
head,' — now, in expounding of that place, he 
brought in an ensample, saying, that he knew in 
London a great, rich merchant, (meaning Hum- 
phrey Monmouth,) which merchant had a very 
poor neighbor ; yet, for all his poverty, he loved 
him very well, and lent him money at his need, 
and let him come to his table whenever he 
would. It was even at that time when Dr. 
Colet was in trouble, and should have been 
burnt, if God had not turned the king's heart 
to the contrary. Isow the rich man began to 
be a Scripture man — he began to smell the 
gospel. The poor man was a Papist still. It 
chanced on a time, when the rich man talked of 
the gospel, sitting at his table, where he reproved 



156 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

Popery and such kinds of things, the poor man, 
being then present, took a great displeasure 
against the rich man, insomuch that he would 
come no more to his house ; he would borrow 
no more money of him as he was wont to do be- 
foretimes ; yea, and conceived such hatred and 
malice against him, that he went and accused 
him before the bishops. Now, the rich man, 
not knowing any such displeasure, offered many 
times to talk with him, and to set him at quiet, 
but it would not be ; the poor man had such a 
stomach that he would not vouchsafe to speak 
with him : if he met the rich man in the street, 
he would go out of his way. One time it hap- 
pened that he met him in so narrow a street, that 
he could not avoid but come near him; yet, for 
all that, 'this poor man had such a stomach 
against the rich man, I say, that he was minded 
to go forward and not to speak with him. The 
rich man perceiving that, catcheth him by the 
hand, and asketh him, saying, * INTeighbor, what 
is come into your heart to take such displeasure 
with me? What have I done against you? 
Tell me, and I will be ready at all times to make 
you amends.' Finally, he spake so gently, so 
charitably, so lovingly and friendly, that it 
wrought so in the poor man's heart, that by 
and by he fell down upon his knees, and asked 



-^ LONDON — Eli A OF THE REFORMATION. 157 

him forgiveness. The rich man forgave him, 
and so took him again to his favor, and they 
loved as well as they did afore. Many a one 
would have said, ' Set him in the stocks ; let 
him have bread of affliction, and water of tribu- 
lation.' But this man did not so. And here 
you see an example of the practice of God's 
words, in such sort that the poor man, bearing 
great hatred and malice against the rich man, 
was brought, through the lenity and meekness 
of the rich man, from his error and wickedness 
to the knowledge of God's word." 

This extract from Latimer may be taken as 
a specimen of the kind of discourses which the 
earnest-hearted Reformer and his brethren were 
accustomed to preach at St. Paul's Cross. That 
spot may be regarded as the very Thermopylae 
of the Reformation ; for there a few heroic and 
Divinely-taught men stood up against a host of 
enemies, resolutely determined to perish rather 
than betray their cause. The church-yard of 
the cathedral was much larger than at present, 
and was bounded by a wall, which ran along by 
Ave Maria-lane, Paternoster-row, Old Change, 
Carter-lane, and Creed-lane. The area thus in- 
closed was enlivened by a spacious grass-plat, 
on the north side of which stood a very ancient 
pulpit-cross of timber, mounted upon steps of 



158 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. \^^ 

stone, and covered with lead. This, from a re- 
mote antiquity, was a famous place for delivering 
proclamations, and speeches on political affairs, 
as well as for communicating religious instruc- 
tion. The Reformers availed themselves of it 
with great zeal and fervor, and there contributed, 
by their sound and lucid exhibitions of gospel 
truth, by preaching Christ and faith in him, 
and not the works of the law, as the method of 
salvation, greatly to enlighten the public mind 
on the all-absorbing question of the Reforma- 
tion. Multitudes gathered round the rude, old 
rostra, on seats or in standing-room, while the 
king and court, the lord mayor and dignified 
citizens, had their covered galleries, to hsten to 
the plain statements and warm appeals of the 
preachers. When the weather prevented the 
general congregation from occupying the open 
space, there was a place of shelter found for 
them under what were called the shrouds, 
which abutted on the church hall. 

Latimer was a special favorite with the popu- 
lace, and far did they come and long did they 
tarry to listen to his plain and heart-stirring 
eloquence. Boldly reproving their vices, and 
laying open the corruptions of our fallen na- 
ture, he insisted upon the doctrines of grace, 
upon the one only way of salvation through 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 159 

Jesus Christ, and the need of the quickening 
power of the Holy Spirit. He strongly in- 
veighed against the degeneracy of the times. 
*' London/' he exclaimed, '' cannot abide to be 
rebuked — such is the nature of man — but Lon- 
don was never so ill as it is now. In times past, 
men were full of pity and compassion, and now 
there is no pity ; for in London their brother 
shall die in the streets for cold, he shall lie sick 
at the door, between stock and stock — I cannot 
tell what to call it — and perish there for hunger. 
O, London ! London ! repent, repent, for I think 
God is more displeased with London than ever 
he was with the city of Nebo. Repent, there- 
fore — repent, London ; and remember that the 
same God liveth now that punished Nebo — 
even the same God, and no other — and he will 
punish sin now as he did then ; and he will 
punish the iniquity of London as he did then 
of Nebo. And ye that be prelates, look well 
to your office, for the right prelating is busy 
laboring, and not lording. Therefore, preach 
and teach, and let your plough be doing." No 
man could be more practical and pointed in 
preaching than he, or, at the same time, better 
understand the gratuitousness of a sinner's sal- 
vation. ^' For our good works," he pithily says, 
** wo shall be rewarded in everlasting life, but 



160 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

not with everlasting life ; for that everlasting life 
is a gift of God, a free gift, given freely unto 
men, through Christ." — Sermons, 

Ridley, too, was a powerful and attractive 
expounder of the principles of the Reformation, 
and on one occasion so interested his audience, 
in setting forth the contents of the late-made 
Book of Common Prayer, as to detain them till 
five o'clock on a November afternoon, when the 
mayor and aldermen departed home by torch- 
light. 

Under the popish regimen, when the pulpit 
cross was occupied by monks, friars, and priests, 
there was erected in front of it a penance scaf- 
fold, on which recanting Protestants sometimes 
had to pay the penalty inflicted on them by 
their bigoted persecutors. In 1532, Baynham 
stood here, with a lighted taper in his hand, 
and a bundle of fagots on his shoulder, only to 
perish afterwards at Smithfield for withdrawing 
his recantation. Breaches of papal disciphne, 
and other offenses, were punished on this spot in 
various ways, sometimes grotesque enough ; as, 
for example, when a man did penance in 1556 
for transgressing Lent, " by holding two pigs, 
ready dressed, whereof one was upon his head,** 
having brought them to the place for the pur- 
pose of selling them. Sentences of another 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 161 

kind were also executed on this interesting spot. 
The burning of vernacular translations and of 
Protestant books, is one of the foremost asso- 
ciations which history attaches to St. Paul's 
Church-yard, at the time now under review. 
In 1521, a number of such volumes were there 
committed to the flames. Cardinal Wolsey wit- 
nessing the process from beneath a canopy of 
gold, attended by foreign ambassadors, as well 
as English lords and prelates. In 1526, an- 
other offering of a like kind was made, in the 
presence of the same individual. But the grand 
Bible-burning was in 1530, when a vast con- 
course assembled to behold the destruction of 
those copies of Tyndale's version which had 
been purchased at Antwerp for that purpose. 
The proceeding turned out for the furtherance 
of the gospel in two ways : for the money paid 
for the books enabled Tyndale to bring out a 
new and improved edition ; and the act of burn- 
ing them incensed the populace, and inspired 
them with sympathy for the Reformers, and 
with indignation against their persecutors. 

On the south-west side of the cathedral, the 
people saw another symbol and instrument of 
intolerance in one of the towers, which, hke a 
similar place at Lambeth, bore the name of 
Lollard's Tower, from its being employed as a 
11 



162 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

prison for heretics. But, in spite of flaming 
pyres and stone-bound prisons, the people went 
on reading the word of Hfe, and drinking in 
saving knowledge from that inspired fountain. 
It is a beautiful association with the London of 
the Reformation, to think how many an unre- 
corded instance there would be of Bible-reading 
in lonely rooms and other places, where the 
students of pure and simple Christianity sought 
to dive into the things of God, and to fill their 
souls with the celestial treasures thus obtained. 
Upon the publication of the great Bible in 1539, 
under the sanction of Cromwell, then Henry's 
prime minister and favorite, the prohibition of 
reading the Scriptures in Enghsh was suspended, 
so far as that version was concerned, and copies 
of the new book were placed in churches for 
the use of the public. Strongly-bound volumes 
were chained to the reading-desks in old St. 
Paul's, and the perusal of the Bible there is one 
of the scenes of the Reformation on which the 
eye of the Protestant poet and painter loves to 
linger. Groups of eager faces surrounded these 
hallowed rallying-points, while some one, more 
of a scholar than his neighbors, read to them 
chapters out of the word of life. 

But Smithfield, during the pi'ogress of the 
Reformationj was a place of mournful, yet of 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 163 

deepest interest. There were exhibited in- 
stances of heroic endurance, infinitely superior 
to all the valorous exploits of proud-belted 
knights, who there fought and conquered in 
tournaments. The large, open space, thus asso- 
ciated with the splendors of chivalry, had of 
old time, in a part called the Elms, from some 
trees which grew there, been a place of public 
execution. Long after the gallows had been 
thence removed to Tyburn, the punishment of 
death by fire came to be inflicted in another 
portion of the same spacious field. Two most 
horrid cases of torture on that spot occurred in 
the years 1531 and 1541. At the former date, 
one Richard Cook, and at the latter, a girl, 
named Margaret Davis, were actually boiled to 
death for the crime of poisoning. On the same 
site was raised the stake at which a noble army 
of Protestant martyrs expired, testifying, amidst 
their sufferings, the power of the truth they 
sealed with their lives. 

In the reign of Henry, who, though he pro- 
moted an outward change in the established 
church, and so contributed to the Reformation, 
was anything but a Protestant, these executions 
began. Barnes, Garrett, Jind Hierome, three 
devoted friends to what was called the Lutheran 
heresy and the new learning, perished in the 



164 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

Smithfield fires. They were strenuous in up- 
holding the cardinal principle of the Christian 
rehgion, salvation by grace through faith in 
Christ by the operation of the Holy Spirit ; for 
which they were hurried to their death by Gar- 
diner, bishop of Winchester, one of the active 
conservators of the popish domination. It is 
remarkable that, at the same time, three papists 
were executed for denying the king's supremacy 
— a striking illustration of the proceedings of 
the monarch, who, in his rehgious- political cha- 
racter, appears as in a two-faced mask. " What 
a country is this !" exclaimed a foreigner, who 
witnessed the strange spectacle ; " on one side 
they are hanging the pope's friends, on the other 
burninof his enemies." 

But the largest sacrifices ofifered on the Smith- 
field altar of bigotry and persecution, were pre- 
sented in the reign of Mary. John Rogers, in 
1555, was the first to suffer there, under the re- 
vived sway of the Romish Church. " He broke 
the ice valiantly," as Bradford said, in a letter 
to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. A sermon he 
preached soon after Mary's accession, first 
brought him into trouble with her council; but 
the immediate cause of his final apprehension 
was a tumult which occurred at St. Paul's Cross, 
while a Popish priest was inveighing against the 



LONDON ERA OF THE UEFORMATION. 165 

lately deceased king, Edward YI., in which tu- 
mult, however, Rogers, so far from offending 
against the law, did what he could to preserve 
the preacher from the fury of the Protestant por- 
tion of his audience. After being kept for a 
long time a prisoner in his own house, he under- 
went a tedious examination before Gardiner, 
which ended in his being condemned to die the 
death of a heretic. " Well, my lord," said the 
confessor boldly, '^ here I stand before God, and 
you, and all this honorable audience, and take 
Him to witness that I never wittingly or willingly 
taught any false doctrine, and therefore have I 
a good conscience before God and all good men. 
I am sure that you and I shall come before a 
Judge that is righteous, before whom I shall be 
as good a man as you, as I nothing doubt but I 
shall be found there a true member of the true 
catholic church of Christ, and everlastingly saved. 
And as for your false church, ye need not to 
excommunicate me forth of it. I have not been 
in it these twenty years, the Lord be thanked 
therefore. But now ye have done what ye can, 
my lord, I pray you yet grant me one thing." 
*' What is that ?" asked the prelate. " That my 
wife, being a stranger, may come and speak with 
me so long as I live. For she hath ten children 
which are hers and mine, and somewhat I would 



1U6 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

counsel her what were best for her to do.'* 
'* No ;'' replied Gardiner, " she is not thy wife ;" 
to which unfeeling remark Rogers rejoined, '* She 
is, and hath been these eighteen years." *' Should 
I grant her to be thy wife?" said the bishop. 
'' Choose you whether you will or not, she shall 
be so nevertheless," answered the martyr. " She 
shall not come to thee," was the stern deter- 
mination of the judge, *' Then I have tried out 
all your charity," was the exclamation which 
closed the colloquy. On his way to Smithfield, 
on the 4th of February, his wife met him with 
an infant in her arms, and all his dear little ones 
around her. Such a spectacle might have un- 
manned a more dauntless breast, but a Divine 
principle within raised him above the weakness, 
though it did not stifle the affections, of nature. 
A pardon at the stake, on condition that he would 
recant, and the sight of his children, hke a flock, 
clinging about their helpless mother, in another 
moment or two to be a widow, were insufficient 
to move his fortitude, and tempt him to falsify 
his faith. Stepping into the car of fire, the good 
man went up to heaven. 

Many such scenes pass before our recollection, 
on pacing over the ground of Smithfield. Of 
another of these, we will venture to insert the de- 
scription, which shows the wide-spread sympathy 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 167 

that was felt for the sufferers. A pious band, 
that were wont to meet in the fields at Islington, 
to read their Bible, were surprised in their holy 
employment one morning in 1558, by a band of 
officers, who carried them before a magistrate. 
Thirteen of the number were condemned and con- 
signed to the flames ; six were sentenced to die 
in Smithfield on the 27th of June. " That morn- 
ing, crowds might be seen gathering at Smithfield, 
to gaze on a spectacle with which many of them 
had become sadly familiar. The murderous pile, 
with a due supply of fagots, was surrounded by 
barriers and officers to keep off the concourse 
of the people. The tenements in Long Lane, 
built on both sides for ' brokers and tipplers,' 
yielded their contributions of profane and thought- 
less idlers. Graver and more respectable citizens 
were wending their way through Giltspur- street 
and other avenues, while from the windows of 
the inns, and other comely buildings, which 
adorned with their picturesque architecture the 
western side of ancient Smithfield, many a face 
was looking out upon the dense mass, in front of 
the church of Bartholomew Priory, whose totter- 
ing wooden steeple still rose to heaven, the me- 
morial of a monastic house, which, before the 
dissolution of the abbeys, in the time of Henry 
YIII., had stood there in its pomp and pride, 



168 LONDON IN THE OLDEx\ TIME. 

one of the finest ornaments of London. Some 
officers of the queen pass through the crowds, 
and, close to the stake, repeat a proclamation, 
which they have already announced by the city 
walls, near the archway of Newgate, forbidding 
any of the people, under pain of imprisonment, 
to speak a word to the forthcoming martyrs. A 
band of serious persons, standing close together, 
listen to these words with deep emotion, as men 
who have come to sympathize with the sufferers, 
and are resolved that the expression of their sym- 
pathy shall not be enchained by this merciless 
edict. Prominently among them stands master 
Bentham, their loved and honored pastor, — ^for 
they are no other than members of ' the congre- 
gation,' met to see their brethren die, to cheer 
them by their prayers, and to be themselves 
strengthened by examples of constancy. At 
length, the procession moves from the Gatehouse ; 
the seven witnesses for truth are seen emerging 
from their prison, attended by officers fully armed. 
On their approaching Smithfield, the faithful con- 
gregation, despite of the royal edict, press for- 
ward, rendering ineffectual the attempt of the 
bill-men to keep them back, and affectionately 
embracing their brethren, bring them in their 
arms to the place where they are to suffer. The 
preparations being made for the last act of this 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 169 

hon'id tragedy, the proclamation, forbidding 
every expression of sympathy, is read again. A 
dead silence reigns over the multitude, as they 
watch the kindling of the fagots. The heroic 
Bentham turns his eyes to the people, and ex- 
claims with a loud voice, *We know that they 
are the people of God, and, therefore, we can- 
not choose but wish well to them, and say, God 
strengthen them ! Almighty God, for Christ's 
sake, strengthen them!' The queen's proclama- 
tion avails not ; a murmur, deep, solemn, subhme, 
like the sound of many waters — rolls along the 
multitude, echoing, ' Amen, Amen, Amen,' to 
the pastor's prayer. The officers were astounded 
and abashed, and the martyrs gathered strength. 
They lifted up their eyes to heaven, as Roger 
Holland prayed, 'Lord, I most humbly thank 
thy Majesty that thou hast called me from this 
state of death unto the light of thy heavenly word, 
and now into the fellowship of thy saints, that I 
may sing and say, Holy, holy, holy. Lord God 
of hosts. Lord, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit. Lord, bless these thy people, and save 
them from idolatry.' " — Spiritual Heroes. 

The Reformation produced some changes in 
the appearance of London, visible in its ecclesias- 
tical buildings and civic usages. The dissolu- 
tion of the monasteries led to the decay or new 



170 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

appropriation of the structures, after which much 
of their imposing aspect, especially in the interior, 
passed away. The frequent processions of priests 
were at an end, and the wealth and splendor of 
the city companies greatly curtailed. Large sums 
of money had been bequeathed to these societies 
for supporting chantries and masses for departed 
souls, which, upon the change of the established 
religion, became forfeited. An act of parliament, 
under Henry YIII., placed all the colleges, chan- 
tries, and free chapels, at the king's pleasure, 
upon which many were immediately taken pos- 
session of by him ; what were left were claimed 
in Edward the Sixth's reign. " This," observes 
Strype, " was a great blow to the corporation of 
London ; nor was there any other way for them, 
but to purchase and buy oflf those rent charges, 
and get as good pennyworths as they could of 
the king ; and this they did, in the third year of 
Edward VI., by selling other of their lands, to en- 
able them to make these purchases. This cost 
the companies £18,700, which possessions, when 
they had thus cleared again, they employed to 
good uses, according to the first intent of them, 
bating the superstition." 

Our notice of London, in connection with the 
Reformation, has carried us forward to the reign 
of Queen Mary, without touching on matters in 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. iTl 

the city annals which must not be passed over 
in silence. Improvements in the pavement of 
the streets, before so deplorably bad, are particu- 
larly described by the chroniclers. Holborn was 
paved in 1534; and in 1543, Whitecross- street 
and many other streets, being pronounced almost 
impassable, were, by act of parliament, ordered 
to be paved with stone, and channels made in the 
midst thereof, like the best streets in the city. 

On a deficiency of water for the wants of the 
citizens being complained of, an act was also 
passed empowering the mayor and corporation 
to bring water to the city, from Hampstead 
Heath, St. Mary-le-bow, Hackney, and Muswell- 
hill, upon their indemnifying from loss the 
owners of land which they might injure. 

But London remained, after all, in a close, 
impure^ and unhealthy state ; and the plague 
continued to pay its visits, and repeat its ravages. 
In the same year in which the large improve- 
ments took place in paving, a great scarcity 
occurred, owing to the rainy season, and the 
consequent disease among the cattle ; upon 
which the lord mayor and corporation issued an 
order against luxurious living, the mayor being 
restricted to seven dishes at dinner or supper, 
the aldermen and sheriffs to six, the sword- 
bearer to four, and the mayor's and sheriffs* 



172 LO'DOX IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

officers to three. Neither were the mayor, al- 
dermen, or sheriffs, after the ensuing Easter, to 
buy any cranes, swans, or bustai'ds, upon pen- 
alty of twenty shillings for each fowl so pur- 
chased. Similar restrictions were enacted in 
1554, under the reign of Queen Mary. 

The political importance of London appears 
very manifest during the reign of Edward VI. 
That youthful prince being in the charge and 
under the influence of his uncle, Edward Sey- 
mour, duke of Somerset, the rest of the council 
of regency became jealous and discontented at 
his undue and unconstitutional amount of power. 
Having formed themselves into a party to op- 
pose the designs of the protector, as Seymour 
was styled, they sought the sympathy of the 
London corporation, and earnestly solicited that 
the city should be immediately guarded in their 
defense. Amidst the consultations of the mayor 
and aldermen on this subject, a letter was pro- 
duced from the king — no doubt, in reality, from 
the duke of Somerset — requesting that five hun- 
dred men should be immediately marched to 
Windsor for his protection. Thus comi;ed by 
the two great powers in conflict for the guardian- 
ship of the realm and the prince during his 
minority, the city, by the advice of a certain 
Judicious orator, named George Stadlow — whose 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1^3 

speech, recommending a non-interference policy, 
has been preserved — determined not to pledge 
itself on either side, though it was pretty- 
manifest that the corporation magnates were 
decidedly opposed to the proceedings of the 
imperious duke. When this mistaken noble- 
man was removed from his lofty seat by his 
late associates, and was sent to prison, he was 
conveyed thither in great state, the earls of 
Southampton and Huntingdon, attended by three 
hundred gentlemen on horseback, leading him 
through London in a sort of triumph. At Hol- 
born-bridge, certain of the aldermen attended 
in like manner, and the streets were lined with 
armed citizens ; and at the end of Soper-lane, 
now Queen-street, he was received by the lord 
mayor, recorder, and sheriffs, with a numerous 
attendance of halberdiers, who conducted him 
to the Tower. His imprisonment was speedily 
followed by his execution on Tower-hill. 

The loyalty of London was fully acknow- 
ledged by the youthful sovereign, in the fourth 
year of his reign, when he granted a new char- 
ter, including the gift of certain lands, lordships, 
rents, and services, in the county of Surrey, 
with other advantages, judicial and commercial; 
in addition to which he conferred valuable boons, 
in the founding of Christ's Hospital, or the Blue 



174 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

Coat School, for poor children; St. Thomas's 
Hospital, Southwark, for the maimed and sick ; 
and Bridewell, for the reformation of the vicious 
and criminal. These acts of charity he was 
moved to perform, through the effects produced 
on his mind by a sermon he heard from Bishop 
Ridley, and by a conversation he afterwards 
had with that prelate — a circumstance which 
does honor to both parties. *' To promote and 
continue this good work, his majesty granted 
to the city certain lands that had been given to 
the house of the Savoy, founded by Henry VH. 
for the lodging of pilgrims and strangers, but 
which had of late been only a harbor for beggars 
and other evil persons, which lands amounted 
to the yearly value of £600. He also com- 
manded, that after reserving a certain quantity 
of the linen, which had been used in times of 
popish superstition, to each church in the city 
and suburbs of London, the remaining super- 
fluous great quantities should be delivered to 
the governors of the hospital for the use of the 
poor children under their care." — Hughson^s 
History and Survey of London. 

The reign of Mary opened with a conflict for 
the possession of the crown, with which the city 
became closely connected, and which further 
illustrated the weight of its influence in pohtical 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 1^5 

struggles. The corporation first espoused the 
cause of Lady Jane Grey, and joined in the pro- 
clamation of her title to accession ; associated 
with which circumstance, it is related by Stow, 
that an unhappy wight, who spoke disrespect- 
fully of the illustrious personage for whom the 
throne was claimed, " was set in the pillory, in 
Cheap, with both his ears nailed, and then 
clean cut off." But, by the influence of the 
council, the corporation was speedily induced to 
renounce Lady Jane, and to acknowledge the 
more legitimate claims of Mary. They rode in 
a body to Cheapside, where they proclaimed 
her at the Cross with apparent joy. 

On the outbreak of Wyatt's insurrection, the 
city was put in a posture of defense. A strong 
guard was raised for every gate and ward ; and 
so great was the apprehension of peril, that the 
judges sat and the counsel pleaded in West- 
minster-hall in armor. Mary visited the city 
and made a speech, which confirmed the people 
in her favor ; and when Wyatt approached 
London Bridge, he found the gate closed and 
the drawbridge cut down. 

The mayor and sheriffs, at the same time, in 
armor rode up and down the streets, and com- 
manded all shops to be immediately shut, and 
the citizens to appear in arms. Wyatt after- 



176 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

wards forced his way into the city, through 
WestDiinster, but being abandoned by his army, 
and finding no disposition on the part of the 
populace to second his designs, his foolish pro- 
ject ended in defeat, confusion, shame, and im- 
prisonment. It scarcely, however, ended there, 
for his enterprise so agitated Mary, and made 
her so tremble for the safety of her throne, that 
not only did she send Wyatt to the block, but 
consigned to the like fate the amiable lady Jane, 
with her attached consort, though they were 
guiltless of any participation in the conspiracy. 
Wholesale vengeance upon persons really impli- 
cated in the rebellion immediately followed. 
''The twelfth day of Febmary, 1553," says a 
contemporary in his journal, '' was made, at 
every gate in London, a new pair of gallows, 
and set up two pair in Cheapside, two pair in 
Fleet-street, one in Smithfield, one pair in Hol- 
born, one at Leadenhall, one at St. Magnus, 
London Bridge, one at Pepper Alley Gate, one 
at St. George's, one in Bermondsey, one on 
Tower Hill, one pair at Charing Cross, one pair 
beside Hyde Park Corner." Nor was the ap- 
paratus of death left to stand idle ; for two days 
afterwards, forty- eight victims were hanged and 
seven quartered, their bodies and heads being 
fastened upon London gates. 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. 17 7 

The man from whose journal the above ex- 
tract is taken, was Henry Machyn, citizen of 
London ; and in the curious document he left 
behind him, and which has lately been edited 
and published complete, (Camden Society's 
publication,) a number of entries exist, illustra- 
tive of the manners and habits of the age in 
London. Public executions appear to have been 
special objects of interest to this ancient citizen ; 
and besides enumerating very many by the 
rope, the fire, and the ax, he gives some remark- 
able details respecting minor punishments, in- 
flicted upon offenders of various kinds : " The 
first of July, 1552, there were a man and woman 
on the pillory in Cheapside ; the man sold pots 
of strawberries, the which were not half full, 
but filled with fern."— ''The thirtieth day of 
June, 1553, was set a post, hard by the Standard, 
in Cheap, and a young fellow tied to the post, 
with a collar of iron about his neck, and another 
to the post with a chain and two men, with two 
whipping him about the post, for pretended 
visions and opprobrious and. seditious words." — 
"The seventh of March, 1554, rode a butcher 
about London, his face towards the horse's tail, 
with half a lamb before, and another behind, 
and veal and a calf borne before him upon a 
pole, raw." — " Thirtieth of May were two set on 
12 



1*78 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

the pillory, a man and woman : but the woman 
had her ear nailed to the pillory for speaking of 
false lies and rumors, the man was for sedi- 
tions words and slanderous words." — " The 
twenty-second of February was Shrove Monday : 
at Charing Cross there was a man carried of 
four men, and before him a bagpipe playing a 
shawm, and a drum playing, and twenty links 
burning about him ; because his next neighbor's 
wife did beat her husband, therefore it is or- 
dered that his next neighbor shall ride about 
the place." 

Evidently a great lover of public sights and 
shows, Machyn expatiates upon the lord of mis- 
rule, one of the foolish officers of the court 
belonging to that time, whose absurd sports 
and extravagances seem to have been watched 
by our civic forefathers with a glee which 
scarcely comports with the gravity which sits 
on their countenances, as seen in the old pic- 
tures preserved in the halls and mansions of 
their posterity. 

As an illustration of the bridal festivities of 
the period, we may introduce the following 
entry in Machyn's Journal : " The twentieth day 
of July was a goodly wedding of master Cooke 
and master Nicholls ; for there were the lord 
mayor and all the aldermen, and many ladies. 



LONDON ERA OF THE REFORMATION. lY9 

and many worshipful men and women ; and 
after the wedding was done, they went home 
to the bride's house to dinner, for there was a 
great dinner as ever was seen, and all manner 
of music and dancing all the day long, and at 
night a goodly supper, and afterwards a goodly 
mask at midnight. At the wedding, master 
Becon^ did preach." 

Entries relating to funerals are abundant, 
whence it has been concluded that the author 
was either a herald or an undertaker. All 
kinds of funerals, from the highest rank down- 
wards, he describes with the minuteness of one 
familiar with their arrangements. ISTot to weary 
the reader with elaborate descriptions of the 
obsequies of royal and other noble personages 
in church and state, we shall merely present the 
following notices of the burial of an alderman 
and a lord mayor's wife : " The fourth day of 
January, 1553, was buried master Robyn, alder- 
man of London, dwelling in Mark-lane, and 
buried in Barkino^ Church ; and the street was 
hanged with black, and the church, and with 
arms ; and there was a herald, bearing his coat 
of armor, and with three pennons of arms. And 

* This was, no doubt, the famous Thomas Becon, prebendary 
of Canterbury, author of various books, lately republished by 
the Parker Society, in three volumes. 



180 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

there were the lord mayor and the aldermen at 
the burying, and there did preach Dr. Bourne; 
and there was the company of the fellowship 
of the clerks, and there was great company of 
mourners, and he gave a great many gowns ; 
and after, they went to dinner ; for this was 
before noon." 

" The fifteenth day of May, 1551, was buried 
my lady Hobulthorne, late mayoress of London, 
with two heralds, and four pennons of arms ; 
and there were the clerks of London ; and there 
had poor men and women many frieze gowns ; 
and there were four aldermen, mourners, and 
two of them knights ; and there a great dole 
was, and the morrow a great dinner." During 
the reign of Mary, torches and tapers formed an 
important item in the appendages of a costly 
funeral, but these popish associations were 
omitted in the times of Edward and Elizabeth. 
Masses and requiems also contributed to the 
show and pomp of these interments under the 
former queen's administration, but of course 
they were dispensed with when, under the 
other sovereigns, the reformed system was in 
the ascendant. Of the burial of heretics, under 
the sway of the popish princes, the following 
notice occurs : " The ninth day of October, 
1555, a serving man (the painter's brother that 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 181 

was burned at Staines) was buried in Moor- 
fields, beside the dog-house, because he was not 
to receive the rites of the church." 

It is probable from the circumstances, that 
the serving man had been a witness for the 
truth of the gospel in these days of persecution. 
What sort of persons the alderman and lady 
mayoress were does not appear. Their closing 
scene was one of worldly honor, while the poor 
Christian's was one of contempt. In such a 
contrast there is nothing to discourage the be- 
liever in Christ crucified. He will ever rejoice, 
when called upon to " suffer with" Christ, in 
the certainty that he will " be also glorified to- 
gether" with him. '* For," as the apostle Paul 
says, '^ The sufferings of this present time are 
not worthy to be compared with the glory which 
shall be revealed in us." Rom. viii, 17, 18. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

Great was the joy of the Londoners on the 
accession of Queen Elizabeth. The cause of the 
Reformation had been promoted by the barba- 
rities of Mary. A feeling of revulsion from the 
Papal Church had become prevalent during the 



182 LONDON IN THE OLDEN ¥IME. 

perpetration of the atrocities in Smithfield and 
elsewhere ; and the people, for the most part, 
hailed a change which promised to put an end 
to such outrages against humanity. The new 
queen was met at Highgate, on the 18th Iso- 
vember, by the lord mayor, aldermen, and 
sheriflfs, w^ho conducted her to the Charterhouse, 
w^hence, on the 28th, she proceeded in state 
through the city. ^' All the streets she was to 
pass, even to the Tower, were new graveled : 
and so she rode through Barbican and Cripple- 
gate, and along London Wall, unto Bishopsgate, 
and thence up to Leadenhall, and so through 
Gracechurch-street and Fenchurch-street, turn- 
ing down Mark-lane into Tower-street, and so on 
to the Tower. Before her rode many gentlemen, 
knights, and nobles ; and after them came the 
trumpeters, blowing ; then all the heralds in 
array, my lord mayor holding the queen's scep- 
tre, riding with garter ; my lord of Pembroke 
bare the queen's sword. Then came her grace 
on horseback, appareled in purple velvet, with 
a scarf about her neck, the Serjeants of arms 
being about her person. !N"ext after her rode 
Sir Robert Dudley, (afterwards earl of Leices- 
ter,) master of her horse, and so the guard with 
halberds. There was great shooting of guns: 
the like was never heard before." 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 183 

The procession through the city to her coro- 
nation, on the second January, 1559, was one of 
unusual magniificence, and included, among other 
exhibitions illustrative of the taste of the age, 
the following, which, in the quaint style of sym- 
bohsm then so much admired, indicated a change 
in the religious character of the government. In 
a pageant erected in Cheapside, an old man, 
with wings and a scythe, representing Time, 
stepped out of a cave, leading another person, 
gracefully appareled in silk, and representing 
Truth, the daughter of Time. The lady had an 
English Bible in her hand, bearing the inscrip- 
tion, '* Verhum veritatis/' which, with an appro- 
propriate speech, she presented to her majesty. 
As soon as the queen received it, she fervently 
kissed it, and laid it on her breast, thanking the 
city for the present, and promising that she 
would often read it. 

On the twelfth of the same month, London 
was again the scene of a grand procession, when 
Elizabeth came from Westminster, through 
streets lined with silks, carpets, flags, streamers, 
and a variety of pageants, to "visit her faithful 
citizens, who offered her a richly embroidered 
velvet purse, containing one thousand marks in 
gold, which she graciously accepted, with the 
following speech: — ''I thank my lord mayor. 



184 LOJSDO.V IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

aldermen, and citizens of London, for this dis- 
tinguished mark of their affection ; and as your 
request is that I should continue your good and 
gracious sovereign, be therefore assured that I 
shall not only at all times, to the utmost of my 
power, endeavor to answer your request, but 
likewise, if occasion should be, shall not spare 
my blood for your safety." — Maitland^s History 
of London, vol. i, p. 254. 

Pageantry and royal progresses were the or- 
der of the day during the reign of Ehzabeth, 
and of this kind of display the city had an am- 
ple share. The companies, after her accession, 
though their ceremonies were shorn of popish 
appendages, exceeded all their preceding splen- 
dor, in their dresses, decorations, and devices. 
Instead of going to mass, they went " to hear 
Divine service and a solemn sennon;" and in 
the dinners that followed, they improved upon 
their predecessors in the dehcacy and adorn- 
ment of the viands. The sideboards were richer 
in plate, and the minstrels' gallery afforded 
sweeter music. The lord mayor's show, by 
land and water, gathered round it fresh attrac- 
tions, among which are specially mentioned '' the 
pageant of triumph," allegorical of the oflSce of 
the magistracy, and '' the maiden chariot," a 
huge piece of machinery, twenty-two feet high, 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 185 

covered with silver embossed work, bearing 
twenty symbolical characters, and drawn by 
nine white Flanders horses. The furnishing and 
keeping in repair of all this machinery became 
quite a business, and shops and artificers for 
the purpose were provided and kept at Leaden- 
hall, the place whence the processions set out. 

Spectacles on the water were associated with 
the street exhibitions. Ships were rigged out, 
with guns and squibs, *' sufiicient for the time, 
with all things well painted and trimmed accord- 
ingly ;" and thus sea-fights were represented, to 
the great astonishment and delight of the crowds 
who lined the banks of the Thames. Archery 
was revived in the style of Henry the Eighth's 
reign. That monarch had bestowed upon one 
Barlow, a good shot, the mock title of duke 
of Shoreditch. On the iTth September, 1583, 
this captain of the archers, with his attendant 
marquises and earls of Clerkenwell, Islington, 
Hoxton, Pancras, &c., had a grand shooting- 
match in Smithfield, having marched thither 
through Moorfields and Finsbury, guarded by 
whifflers, bill-men, pages, and footmen. Con- 
nected with all this, there was, of course, the 
utmost possible show in the way of dress ; yet 
the queen, so fond of extravagant apparel her- 
self, discountenanced the taste in the lower 



186 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

orders, and, like some of her predecessors on 
the throne, showed great solicitude in prescribing 
the material and the fashion of what her subjects 
should wear. The women were forbidden to 
have their gowns, kirtles, waistcoats, and petti- 
coats mingled with silk ; nor were the apprentices 
to wear hats instead of caps, or any sort of 
doublet except of leather, canvass, woolen, or 
fustian, or any ruffles, cuffs, or loose collars at 
all. To caiTy out these sumptuary regulations, 
two members of the Ironmongers' Company, in 
the year 1579, attended, with two members of 
the Grocers' Company, at Bishopsgate, from 
seven o'clock in the morning till six in the after- 
noon, to examine the dress of all who passed 
through that great thoroughfare. 

The commerce of the city of London greatly 
advanced during the reign of Elizabeth, and 
hence it was supplied with the wealth which 
enabled it to make the great loans from time to 
time, demanded of the liv^ery companies by the 
sovereign, to replenish her exhausted coffers. 
One important event, associated with this branch 
of London civic history, was the building of the 
Eoyal Exchange. Previously, the merchants 
were accustomed to meet in Lombard-street for 
the transaction of business ; but their meetings. 
Stow informs us, " were unpleasant and trouble- 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 187 

some, by reason of walking and talking in a 
narrow, open street; being there, constrained 
either to endure all extremes of weather, heat 
and cold, snow and rain, or else to shelter them- 
selves in shops/' Sir Thomas Gresham, a very 
public-spirited merchant, who had long been an 
agent of the queen for negotiating loans in the 
Low Countries, offered to remedy the evil by 
the erection of a public bourse, or exchange, at 
his own expense, provided a site were supplied 
by the citizens. Ground on the side of Cornhill 
was accordingly purchased by subscription, and 
conveyed to Sir Thomas. He laid the founda- 
tion stone of the new edifice on the Yth June, 
1566 ; in the November of the following year it 
was covered with slate, and in 1569, finally com- 
pleted. A number of shops were included in 
the building, but these remained for some time 
tenantless ; when Gresham solicited her majesty 
to pay a visit of state to the Exchange, and thus 
raise it in public notice and estimation. In ad- 
dition, he adopted the device of going twice a 
day round about the upper part, entreating the 
shopkeepers already there to adorn with wares 
and wax lights as many shops as they could, for 
which they should have them rent free for the 
year ; which device, in connection with the royal 
visit, seems to have succeeded. Her majesty, 



188 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

attended by many of the nobility, came to view 
the important structure, and then dined with Sir 
Thomas Gresham, at his house in Bishopsgate- 
street. In a dramatic poem written on the oc- 
casion, he is represented as pledging his royal 
mistress in a cup impregnated with the powder 
of a costly pearl, after the fashion of Cleopatra's 
feat, and the fiction has become a tradition. A 
more improbable performance could not have 
been ascribed to the cool and cautious Gresham, 
nor can there be any doubt that her majesty 
would much rather have had the pearl on her 
stomacher, than thus wasted in idle compliment. 
Beyond all qiiestion, however, the entertain- 
ment of the royal guest was prince-like, and so 
pleased was the queen with the whole affair, 
that, before she left, she ordered the herald to 
proclaim, with sound of trumpet, that the new 
bourse should be called the Royal Exchange. 
After this there was no lack of tenants for the 
shops. The rent rose to four pounds ten shillings 
a year, and Gresham made an annual income of 
£700 and upwards. Wares in abundance were 
furnished, and among other articles mentioned 
by Stow are mouse-traps, bird-cages, shining 
horn lanthorns, and Jews' trumpets. The Ex- 
change now became a place of large resort, 
sometimes inconveniently so ; the entrance was 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 189 

beset by rat-catchers, sellers of dogs, birds, 
plants, trees, and other thmgs, to the great an- 
noyance and trouble of merchants, gentlemen, 
ladies, and others. Apple-women and orange- 
women also had their stalls hard by, with all the 
usual accompaniments of crowds of urchins, play- 
ing and shouting. When bull or bear baits — 
the cruel but favorite sport of the time — ^were 
about to take place, the managers of these brutal 
exhibitions were accustomed to march to Corn- 
hill, with their dogs, bears, bulls, and baboons, 
to proclaim, at 'Change time, for the benefit of 
merchants and others, the hour when the spec- 
tacle was to begin. 

In the reign of Elizabeth, the corporation of 
London were great dealers in corn. The custom 
of providing corn for the supply of the citizens 
in time of scarcity had been growing up during 
a full century and more. Owing to the fluctu- 
ations of the weather, and the imperfection of 
tillage, the harvests were often extremely scanty, 
and it was necessary to have recourse to foreign 
countries for the importation of the staff of life. 
Wheat was procured in large quantities from 
abroad, and stored up for the emergencies which 
arose. The companies were often called upon 
to assist in raising money for the payment of the 
wheat so procured. Numerous orders to that 



190 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

efifect, or precepts, as tliey were called, are pre- 
served in the archives of the several companies. 
Sometimes the city had to borrow from the 
court. The public stock of com was laid up in 
the Bridge House, which formed the great cor- 
poration granary. The wheat, before it was 
bought, was inspected by the mayor; he also 
viewed the granaries weekly, in person or by 
deputy. The grain was measured by the city 
corn meters, and was never sold cheaper than it 
cost, nor above ^d. or Ad. under the current 
market price. In connection with the granaries 
at the Bridge House, there were mills for the 
grinding of corn, and ovens in which to bake 
bread for the poor. In 1594, Admiral Hawkins 
demanded of the lord mayor the use of this 
great corn factory and baking-house, for the use 
of the queen's fleet, but was finnly refused, with 
the spirit generally displayed by our great civic 
functionaries, in the resistance of all invasions 
upon municipal possessions and prerogatives. 

Two years after the new queen's accession to 
the throne, a violent storm of thunder and light- 
ning occasioned a serious injury to the old Ca- 
thedral of St. Paul. Unlike the present edifice 
in the style of its architecture, it was crowned 
with a steeple instead of a dome ; and that part 
of the building having attracted the electric fluid, 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH, 191 

a fire broke out, at first like the light of a torch, 
which, fanned by the wind, increased to such a 
degree as to wrap the spire in flame. " With- 
in an hour the high steeple of St. PauFs, which 
was so long in building and so renowned, was 
utterly consumed to the very battlements, which, 
being of some breadth and strength, as was need- 
ful to uphold such a weight, received most part 
of the timber which fell from the spire, and be- 
gan to burn with such vehemence that all the 
timber was burnt, the iron and bells melted, and 
fallen down upon the stairs in the church in a 
small space." — -MaitlarKT s London, vol. i, p. 255. 
Other parts of the exterior of the building after- 
wards caught fire ; the roof on the north and 
south aisles was destroyed, but the inside was 
left undamaged. 

A far more grievous calamity took place in 
1563, when the plague revisited the city. Pre- 
cautions were taken to check the progress of the 
disease. Inquiries were made in every parish 
respecting infected persons. Warning was re- 
quired to be given of alehouses where the pesti- 
lence had entered. No one coming out of them 
was permitted to cross the portals of a church, 
and a blue cross was fixed on the habitation 
where the destructive epidemic was known to 
exist. Bonfires were also ordered to be kindled 



1 92 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

in the streets. Yet, with every precaution, the 
number carried off was very great, and the en- 
tire mortahty for the year in London amounted 
to twenty thousand three hundred and seventy- 
two. Such visitations occurred repeatedly after- 
wards, and at these times, under the influence 
of a moral excitement and a desire for the sup- 
pression of vice, as well as from considerations 
of policy, the queen issued stringent orders to 
restrict and regulate theatrical amusements. 
Not only did the play-houses bring together 
crowds of people, a circumstance likely to aid 
the prevalence of a contagious disease, but they 
we re^ also found to be, as they have ever since 
proved, schools of vice, notwithstanding all the 
theorizing about them, by the lovers of the drama, 
as schools of virtue. Plays were then acted on 
Sundays and festivals, and thus diminished the 
attendance at church, and at all times they 
drew together the profligate and depraved, who 
tempted and led astray the innocent and unsus- 
pecting. ^'Not only," says the proclamation, 
** was there an unthrifty waste of the money of 
the poor, but there were sundry robberies, by 
picking and cutting of purses, uttering of popu- 
lar and seditious matter, many corruptions of 
youth and other enormities." Accordingly, re- 
gulations were made to prevent the enacting of 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 193 

any play in which '' there should be uttered any 
words, examples, or doings of unchastity, sedi- 
tion, or such like unfit and uncomely matter." 
Licenses were rendered necessary for all public 
performances. They were altogether forbidden 
in the usual time of Divine service on the Sunday 
or holiday. Every one licensed was required to 
pay something for the support of the poor and 
of hospitals, and all sums raised by forfeitures, 
consequent on a violation of the law, were de- 
voted to the same purpose. Private theatricals 
in the houses of the nobility and gentry were, 
however, still allowed. The players, exceed- 
ingly dissatisfied with what was done, petitioned 
the queen and council for Hberty to act as before, 
but the restrictions were not relaxed ; yet the 
people of the stage disobeyed the orders issued 
by authority, " and their plays," says Maitland, 
"so abusive oftentimes of virtue or particular 
persons, gave great offense, and occasioned dis- 
turbances, whence they were now and then 
stopped and prohibited." — History of London, 
vol. i, p. 263. 

Great evils, physical and social, were expe- 
rienced in the metropolis during the days of Queen 
Elizabeth. Pestilence, after every care which 
then seemed practicable, spread widely from time 
to time, and only disappeared for a while to re- 
13 



194 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

turn with unabated or augmented virulence. 
Scarcities and famines repeatedly occurred. In- 
surrections and riots also happened, in which the 
apprentices played a distinguished part. Incor- 
rigible rogues and vagrants, with which the city 
abounded, prompted these lads to combine for 
mischievous purposes ; and such w^as the pitch 
of insolence to which these parties sometimes 
rose, that in 1595 the mayor proposed that they 
should be placed under martial law, which the 
queen permitted, as the only method of pre- 
serving the peace. Ignorant and wicked indi- 
viduals, the lowest of the population, who had 
long been fostered by the indiscriminate hospi- 
tality of the monasteries, and were now thrown 
upon their own exertions, through the dissolution 
of those establishments, indulged in all sorts of 
vices and crimes, and perpetrated every species 
of roguery. Picking pockets, at that early pe- 
riod, became a profession, and a school for teach- 
ing it was opened at Billingsgate ; pockets were 
hung up with bells attached, and beginners in 
the art practised to attain such dexterity as to 
empty the pockets without ringing the bell. To 
abate the nuisance of the influx of such charac- 
ters, beadles vvere appointed to patrol certain cir- 
cuits, and to watch at the gates for the appre- 

ixensiou oi these personSf _This awaogepaent was 



LONDON UNDER QtJEEX ELIZABETH. 196 

made in the year 156 9, at whicli time tlie first 
mention of a City Marshal is made, a title then 
given to the officer who superintended the adminis- 
tration of this branch of the city government. 

London appears in history associated with seve- 
ral of the political events of this reign. In 1559, 
peace was proclaimed there between England, 
Scotland, and France, with the usual solemnities, 
by the heralds, assisted by the corporation. In 
1585, the city was eminently active in preparing 
against the threatened Spanish invasion. The 
several companies sent about 5,000 men into the 
field, at their own expense ; and speedily after- 
wards a considerable reinforcement was supplied 
from the same sources for the fleet, to assist the 
Dutch against the common foe. Y/hen, in 1586, 
a dangerous conspiracy against the queen was 
brought to light, the citizens were foremost in 
returning thanks for her deliverance, with the 
usual appendages of bells and bonfires. On the 
occasion of passing sentence of death on Mary 
queen of Scots, the corporation of London solemn- 
ly proclaimed it at Cheapside, Leadenhall, Lon- 
don Bridge, and Chancery-lane. In 1588, no 
less than ten thousand men were raised and 
equipped at the expense of the city, for the safe- 
guard of the nation against the formidable Spanish 
armada ; and at the same time a grant was made 



196 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

to the queen of sixteen of the largest ships in the 
Thames, and four pinnaces, or Hght frigates. 
On other occasions, the Londoners showed their 
zeal in supplying her majesty with forces for the 
national defense; and in the year 1596, did so 
"with an expedition and with a result rather ex- 
traordinary. *^ The lord mayor and aldermen of 
this city, being at sermon at St. Paul's Cross, 
they received a message from the queen, com- 
manding them forthwith to raise a certain num- 
ber of able-bodied men in the city, fit for imme- 
diate service ; wherefore, having instantly left the 
church, they set so heartily about the work, that 
before eight at night they had pressed a thousand 
men ; which being the number required, they 
were, with an unparalleled expedition, completely 
fitted with all martial accoutrements before the 
next morning, and ready to march to Dover, and 
from thence to assist the French in defense of 
Calais ; but, unexpectedly, in the afternoon they 
received orders to return to their respective habi- 
tations ; so that this petty army, phantom-like, 
no sooner appeared than it disappeared, having 
not been full four-and- twenty hours on foot." — 
Maitlaiid, vol. i, p. 180. 

When the earl of Essex, in 1601, quarreled 
with Elizabeth, and returned from Ireland to his 
house in the Strand, he endeavored to raise a 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 197 

party in the metropolis. Intrigues ^ere privately 
carried on for that purpose ; and when the cir- 
cumstance became known at court, the queen 
sent strict orders to the lord mayor to be vigilant 
in the preservation of the peace. Supposing 
that the citizens sympathized in his views and 
feelings, and that they would at once rise on his 
behalf, and defend his cause, the poor, infatuated 
earl started from his mansion with two hundred 
followers. Being joined by the earl of Bedford 
and lord Cromwell, he paraded through the 
Strand, and entered the city at Temple Bar, shout- 
ing, as a rallying cry, " For the queen ! for the 
queen ! my hfe is in danger." Upon his repairing 
to the house of one of the sheriffs, on whose as- 
sistance he rehed, he found that officer unwilling 
to aid him, and was equally disappointed at the 
conduct of the populace in general, who gathered 
round him with a vague curiosity, wondering what 
he could be thinking of. To all his entreaties 
for support they turned a deaf ear, while, to his 
bitter mortification, he speedily learned that lord 
Burleigh had, at Cheapside, pubhcly proclaimed 
him, and such as abetted him, traitors to her 
majesty and the state. He was soon deserted 
by many of those who had accompanied him 
from his residence, to which he now considered 
it best to return as quickly as possible. At Lud- 



198 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

gate, lie was stopped by a party of men, whom 
the bishop of London had posted there, but 
forcing his way, not without loss of life on both 
sides, he repaired to the river, and took boat to 
Essex House. The house was besieged by the 
queen's soldiers; and at first the misguided 
nobleman, who had brought himself to the brink 
of ruin, resolved to defend his life, or sell it dearly; 
but on further consideration, he made up his mind 
to surrender at discretion, upon which he was 
conveyed to Lambeth Palace, and thence to the 
Tower of London ; there, after a short imprison- 
ment, his tragical execution took place, the last 
of a long series within the walls of the gloomy 
fortress. The queen was so much gratified by 
the conduct of the Londoners at this very critical 
emergency, that she sent one of her officers to 
the lord mayor, to express her gratitude for their 
love and duty, and her hope that they would con- 
tinue to maintain the peace of the country. 

The Reformation had taken a deep root in 
London before the reign of Mary, and manifest- 
ed itself in the most unequivocal manner after the 
accession of her sister to the throne. With an 
impetuosity which displeased the more wary 
queen and her prudent counsellors, many of 
the inhabitants attacked the popish images 
and other monuments in Bow Church, making 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 199 

strange havoc among these relics of the old sys- 
tem. St. Paul's Cross became once more the 
favorite pulpit of the Reformers, and there old 
Miles Coverdale, Jewel, Bentham, and other 
worthies in the good cause, raised their voices 
with holy freedom and joy, in the advocacy of 
truths for which they had recently suffered 
exile and privation. In the Lent of 1560, some 
celebrated sermons were delivered on this spot. 
We are informed that, on the tliird of March, 
Grindal, the new bishop, preached in his rochet 
and chimere before the mayor and aldermen, 
and a great auditory. After the sermon a 
psalm was sung, (which was the common prac- 
tice of the Reformed churches abroad,) wherein 
the people also joined their voices, breaking 
forth in the open air round the court and 
churchyard of St. Paul's — a psalm of thanks- 
giving for recovered liberty from Romish thral- 
dom. 

It is to be lamented, that among those who 
had been thus emancipated there arose a spirit 
of intolerance and persecution towards such as 
differed from them in matters of inferior mo- 
ment. After much contention about vestments, 
which some objected to, the clergy v/ere sum- 
moned before the prelate of the diocese, and 
one Mr. Cole being appareled in these vest- 



200 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

ments, the bishop's chancellor addressed the 
reverend assembly in the following words : 
'* My masters, and ye ministers of London, the 
counciFs pleasure is that strictly ye keep the 
unity of apparel, like this man who stands here, 
canonically habited with a square cap, a scho- 
lar's gown, priest-like, a tippet, and in Church 
a linen surplice. Ye that will subscribe, write 
Volo — those who will not subscribe, write Nolo^ 
Sixty-one signed, and thirty-seven refused. The 
latter were immediately suspended, with the 
intimation that if they did not conform within 
three months they would be deprived. De- 
privation did follow suspension, in consequence 
of which many London churches were shut up, 
and the people were ready to mutiny for 
their ministers. Six hundred persons came to 
one of the city churches, to receive the com- 
munion on Palm Sunday, but the doors were 
shut, there being none to officiate. The cries 
of the people reached the court ; the secretary 
wrote to the archbishop to supply the churches 
and release the prisoners, but his grace was in- 
exorable. " He confessed that there were many 
parishes unserved, that he underwent many 
hard speeches and much resistance from the 
people, but nothing more than was to be expect- 
ed; that he had sent his chaplains into the 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 201 

city to serve in some of the great parishes, but 
they could not administer the sacrament be- 
cause the officers of the parish had provided 
neither surphces nor wafer-bread ; that on Palm 
Sunday one of his chaplains, designing to admin- 
ister the sacrament to some that desired it, the 
table was made ready, but while he was read- 
ing the chapter of the passion, one of the par- 
ishioners drew from the table both the cup and 
the wafer-bread, because the bread was not 
common, and so the people were disappointed 
and the chaplain derided; that divers church- 
wardens would provide neither surplice nor wa- 
fer-bread. He acquainted the secretary further, 
that he had talked with several of the new 
preachers, who were movers of sedition and 
disorder; that he had commanded them si- 
lence, and had put some in prison ; that on 
Maundy Thursday he had many of the bishop 
of London's parishioners, churchwardens and 
others, before him, but that he was fully tired, 
for some ministers would not obey their sus- 
pensions, but preached in defiance of them. 
Some churchwardens would not provide the 
church furniture, and others opposed and dis- 
turbed those that were sent to officiate in the 
prescribed apparel." — Neal, vol. i. pp. 223, 224. 
It would seem from all this, that Puritan prin- 



202 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

ciples had taken a strong hold upon the minds 
both of the clergy and laity. And it should be 
added that their predilections were, to a great 
extent, connived at by Grindal, the bishop of 
London — a circumstance which Parker, the 
archbishop of Canterbury, does not fail to refer 
to with deep displeasure, in the document from 
which the preceding extract is supplied. The 
Puritan controversy continued throughout Eliz- 
abeth's reign to produce great excitement in 
London, the sufiferings of the non-conforming 
ministers creating much sympathy and increased 
love in the minds of the flocks deprived of their 
ministrations. A scarcity of intelligent, evangel- 
ical, and earnest preachers was the result of the 
intolerant methods pursued, in proof and illus- 
tration of which we may cite a part of a pe- 
tition to parliament, presented by some of the 
London citizens : " May it please you, therefore, 
for the tender mercies of God, to understand 
the woeful estate of many thousand souls, dwell- 
ing in deep darkness, and in the shadow of 
death, in this famous and populous city of Lon- 
don — a place in respect of others, accounted as 
the morning star, or rather as the sun in its 
brightness, because of the gospel supposed to 
shine gloriously and abundantly in the same; 
but being near looked into, will be found sorely 



LO^^DON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 203 

eclipsed and darkened through the dim clouds 
of unlearned ministers, whereof there be no 
small number. There are in this city a great 
number of churches, but the one-half of them, 
at the least, are utterly unfurnished of preach- 
ing ministers, and are pestered with candle- 
sticks, not of gold, but of clay, unworthy to 
have the Lord's lights set in them ; with watch- 
men that have no eyes, and clouds that have no 
water. In the other half, partly by means of 
non-residents, which are very many, partly 
through the poverty of many meanly qualified, 
there is scarce the tenth man that makes con- 
science to wait upon his charge, whereby the 
Lord's Sabbath is ofttimes wholly neglected, 
and for the most part miserably mangled. Ig- 
norance increaseth, and wickedness comes upon 
us like an armed man. As sheep, therefore, 
going astray, we humbly, on our knees, beseech 
this honorable assembly, in the bowels and 
blood of Jesus Christ, to become humble suit- 
ors to her majesty, that we may have guides. 
As hungry men, bound to abide by our empty 
rack staves, we do beg of you to be means that 
the bread of life may be brought home to us; 
that the sower may come into the fallow- 
ground, that the pipes of water may be brought 
into our assemblies, that there may be food and 



204 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

refreshing for us, our poor wives, and forlorn 
children : so shall the Lord have his due honor, 
you shall discharge good duty to her majesty, 
many languishing souls shall be comforted, 
atheism and heresy banished, her majesty have 
more faithful subjects, and you more hearty 
prayers for your prosperity in this hfe, and full 
happiness in the life to come, through Jesus 
Christ our alone Saviour.'' — Neal, vol. i. 

One consequence of this state of things was, 
that many godly persons were wont to assemble, 
after the manner of the worthies in the Marian 
persecution, for religious worship in secret 
places, in the city of London and the neighbor- 
hood. These were frequently tracked out by 
their enemies, taken into custody, and commit- 
ted to the. Compter prison. On one occasion, 
on Sunday morning, when many were so en- 
' gaged in a field at Islington, the queen's officers 
apprehended fifty-six of them, and sent them 
two by two to the London jails. Some were 
laden with irons in Newgate, and others beaten 
with cudgels at Bridewell, and cast into a place 
called " Little Ease ;" while officers ransacked 
and rifled their dwellings, in the search after se- 
ditious and unlawful books. Some had even to 
pay the final penalty of the law in this world 
for their faithfulness to the gospel. On the last 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 205 

day of March, 1593, two of these martyrs were 
brought to St. George's-in-the-Fields, and at 
the gallows had the rope adjusted round their 
necks, expecting every moment to die ; but by 
an unexampled refinement of cruelty, they were 
remitted to Newgate, to be brought out again 
the next day, and endure the same degradation 
and sujFerings, and then perish by the hand of 
the executioner. 

The names of these men were Barrowe and 
Greenwood. The former had been converted 
to the service of God in London, as related in 
the following narrative of the event, which 
brings before us a beautiful Sabbath scene in the 
old city, such as no doubt often occurred in 
those Puritan times, when the truth was faith- 
fully preached, and the Holy Spirit sealed it 
upon the consciences of men. "Walking in 
London one Lord's day, with one of his compa- 
nions, he heard a preacher at his sermon, very 
loud, as they passed by the church ; upon 
which Mr Barrowe said unto his consort, ' Let 
us go in, and hear what this man saith that is 
thus earnest.' ' Tush !' said the other, * What ! 
shall we go in and hear a man talk ?' But he 
went and sat down. And the minister was ve- 
hement in reproving sin, and sharply applied 
the judgment of God against the same, and it 



206 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TI>IE. 

should seem touched him to the quick in some 
things that he was guilty of, so as God set it 
home to his soul, and began to work his repent- 
ance and conversion thereby. For he was so 
stricken that he could not be quiet, until, by 
conference with godly men, and further hearing 
of the word, with diligent reading and medita- 
tion, God brought peace to his soul and con- 
science, after much humiliation of heart and re- 
formation of Mfe ; and so he left the court, and 
retired himself to a private life, some time in 
the country, and some time in the city, giving 
himself to study and the reading of the Scrip- 
tures, and other good works, very diligently; 
and being missed at court by his consorts and 
acquaintance, it was quickly bruited abroad that 
Barrowe was turned Puritan." — Young's 
Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 433. Another 
individual of the same class, named Penry, a 
Welshman, was executed on the gallows at 
St. Thomas Watering. 

Before leaving the reign of Elizabeth, and 
bringing the present portion of our sketches to 
a close, it will be appropriate to introduce some 
notices of the extent and appearance of the me- 
tropolis at that period, as described by John 
Stow, perhaps the most diligent and graphic of 
all the antiquaries that London has produced, 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 207 

or that ever loved to embalm lier name, and 
perpetuate the remembrance of her ancient re- 
mains, and her varied scenes and fortunes. 
The dihgent topographer takes us round the 
walls and through the streets, and tells us sto- 
ries of the past, and now and then drops a 
reminiscence of his own early days, in that plea- 
sant, quaint, expressive, hvely style of which he 
was eminently a master. 

London had, then, greatly altered from what 
it was as we represented it at the close of the 
fourteenth century. The Reformation had taken 
place, and the conventual buildings of former 
days had been demoUshed, or had undergone 
great changes. The population of the city had 
increased; the houses within the vfalls were 
closely crowded together, and the boundaries, 
in spite of municipal regulations and royal orders 
to the contrary, were ever enlarging. The 
streams that had watered the city, Walbroke, 
Langbourne, and Oldbourne, were now covered 
over, and were but underground ditches or 
sevvers. The Wells river and the Fleet dyke 
had been long uncleansed, and were now choked 
and dammed up. Holywell, too, was in decay, 
but the fountains at Clerkenwell and St. Cle- 
ment's. Inn were ^' fair curbed with stone,'' and 
yielded a full supply of water. The main pro- 



208 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

vision, however, of that essential element was 
by means of the conduits or water-courses, which 
were made along some of the main streets. The 
old walls, with their towers and gates, repaired 
or renewed, still girded the city round ; but 
London then had strayed some way into the 
adjacent country, though leaving the utmost 
reach of the present London at a vast distance. 
The ditch which ran beside the wall had in many 
places been filled up and built over ; where the 
hollows remained the banks had been broken 
down, garden-plots, carpenters' yards, and bow- 
ling alleys, occupied the channel of the old 
stream. Water-gates and wharves lined the 
banks of the Thames, even then frequented by 
vessels, of all descriptions. Baynard's Castle 
still lifted up its stern feudal brow^ in Blackfriars, 
and the towers on London Bridge continued to 
guard that only entrance to the city from the 
south. Taking a stroll through the Minories, 
our local guide, in the true spirit of a poetic 
antiquary, calls to mind the scene as it was in 
the days of his youth, when an abbey of nuns 
stood there, and a farm was attached, whence, 
as a boy, he fetched many a time three ale-pints 
of milk for a half- penny, fresh from the cow. 
One Goodman had the farm and fields, and the 
latter he let out for grazing horses and for gar- 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 209 

^ den- plots, and thereby became a gentleman; 
and who that walks through the region that 
bears his name, with its closely-packed dwell- 
ings, but must be ready to exclaim, '* How would 
old Goodman stare to see his own fields now !" 
Tenements were rising outside Aldgate, as far as 
Whitechapel Church ; but Spitalfields were still 
what the name imports, all green and rural, 
though along Bishopsgate road, as far as Shore- 
ditch, the town was trenching on the country. 
Finsbury, not long before Stow's time somewhat 
fenny, and subject to overflows, had been drained, 
and was now dotted over with the gardens and 
summer-houses of the citizens, much to the dis- 
pleasure of those who had been wont to practise 
archery in that neighborhood. Three windmills, 
too, in that exposed ground, might be seen, with 
their sweeping sails. From Moorgate, all round 
to Aldersgate, houses were built close to the 
city walls, and extended towards Old-street 
Road. Aldersgate-street was continued north- 
ward by Goswell-street, replenished with small 
tenements and cottages, and alleys and gardens, 
banqueting-houses and bowling places. Clerken- 
well bounded the suburb along John-street. On 
the north side of Holborn there were buildings : 
lodgings for gentlemen, inns for travelers, almost 
up to St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The Strand, with 
14 



210 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

the fair mansions and gardens of the nobility, 
touching the water's edge, had not many houses 
on the opposite side. Drury-lane had divers 
buildings, hostelries, and houses for gentlemen 
and men of honor, and the Mews at Charing 
Cross was the western boundary of the metro- 
polis. Westminster was also spreading out its 
borders, and so were Southwark and the places 
on the other side the river. Perambulating the 
streets of the city with John Stow, we come to 
Crosby Hall, which he thus describes: "The 
same was built by Sir John Crosby, grocer and 
woolman. This house he built of stone and 
timber, very large and beautiful, and the highest 
at that time in London. William Bond increased 
this house in height, with building of a turret on 
the top thereof. Divers ambassadors have been 
lodged there. Sir John Spencer, alderman, 
lately purchased this house, and made great re- 
parations, kept his mayoralty there, and since 
built a most large warehouse near thereunto." — 
Stow's Survey, Thorn's Edit., p. 65. 

Passing by what remained of St. Anthony's 
Hospital, in Threadneedle-street, he gives us 
the followmg odd reminiscence of his youth: 
**I remember that the officers charged with 
oversight of the markets in this city, did divers 
times take from the market people pigs starved. 



LONDON UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. 211 

or otherwise unwholesome for man's sustenance : 
these they slit in the ear. One of the proctors 
of St. Anthony tied a bell about the necks of 
those pigs, and let them feed on the dunghills ; 
no man would hurt or take them up, but if any 
gave to them bread or other feeding, such would 
they know, watch for, and daily follow, whining 
till they had somewhat given them ; whereupon 
was raised a proverb, 'Such a one will follow 
such a one, and whine as it were an Anthony's 
pig ;' but if such a pig grew to be fat, and came 
to good liking, as ofttimes they did, then the 
proctor would take him up to the use of the 
hospital." — Stow's Survey, ThorrCs Edit., p. 69. 
On his way past St. Michael's Church, Corn- 
hill, he tells a superstitious story, illustrative of 
the credulity prevalent in those times, about a 
tempest of lightning, attended by "an ugly 
shapen sight," which frightened the ringers, and 
left the mark of claws on the stone wall, deeply 
indented, *' as if it had been so much butter." 
To prove the truth of the fable. Stow declares 
that he had often put a feather or stick into the 
indentations, to measure their depth, and found 
it some inches. Doubtless, the worthy topo- 
grapher mistook the electric fluid for Satanic 
agency ; and it is justly remarked by one of 
Stow's editors, that " Franklin, though no exor- 



212 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

cist, has proved himself a great layer of such 
spirits.'' — Stow's Survey, Thorn's Edit., p. 75. 

We have only space to add, that in one part 
of his curious Survey, Stow complains of the 
number of cars, drays, carts, and coaches, more 
than he had been accustomed to, so that the 
streets and lanes being straitened, traveling was 
dangerous, as experience proved. '' The coach- 
man," he remarks, " rides behind the horses' 
tails, lasheth them, and looketh not behind him ; 
the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray, 
and letteth his horse lead him home. I know 
that by the good laws and customs of this city, 
shodde carts (that is, carts shod or bound with 
iron) are forbidden to enter the same, except 
upon reasonable cause, as service of the prince, 
or such like, they be tolerated. Also, that the 
fore horse of every carriage should be led by 
hand, but these good orders are not observed."' — 
S tow's Survey, p. 32. 



CONCLUSION. 213 



COJSrCLUSIOK 

Here, for the present, we must bring our 
sketches to a conclusion. History ever reveals 
a succession of changes. Everything, during 
the period just reviewed, underwent change. 
The boundaries, the buildings, the productions 
of old London, change and change again. A 
British, a Eoman, a Saxon, a Danish, a IS'orman 
impress upon the civilization is produced, and 
then nearly effaced by or confusedly blended 
with what follows. Impress succeeds impress ; 
the obliteration of the old, or its admixture with 
the new, is ever going on. Forms of society, 
manners, customs, pursuits, and language, are 
repeatedly changed. The very population itself, 
their physical constitution, appearance, features, 
and complexion, habits of thought and modes 
of feehng, are subject to the all-pervading law 
of change. Perhaps no other city exhibits such 
a scene of swift succeeding mutations as London 
does ; perhaps nowhere else do we see one kind 
of civilization so often giving way to another. 
As we walk through the streets and muse on 
the past, what a flitting scene, what a varied, 
many-colored, and diversely-fashioned proces- 
sion, or pageant, sweeps before the eye of the 



214 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

mind ! What a comment on the saying in the 
Divine Book, ''The fashion of this world passeth 
away !" Yet beneath all this change, there is 
identity. The form is mutable, but the sub- 
stance of that humanity which thus manifests 
itself, so Proteus-like, is ever the same. The ex- 
ternal appearance, the mode of expressing the 
experience of the inward man, varies — there is a 
fashion in that — but the real essence of human 
nature knows no variableness. Fashion has its 
domain without ; it alters not the nature withiiu 
The painted or rudely clothed aborigine in his 
hut ; the Roman in his toga and sandals, walking 
in the gardens of his villa ; the Northman, from 
old Saxony or Denmark, with his cloak and 
tunic, his glittering helm or shield ; and the 
Norman, in his mail panoply, traversing the 
street or entering the folk-mote of Gothicized 
London — were essentially of the same nature, 
made of one blood, descended from one great 
progenitor, bound by mutual sympathies, des- 
tined to the same infinite hereafter, inheritors of 
the same spiritual degeneracy, exposed to the 
same final ruin, needing the same redemption, 
the same atonement, the same Holy Spirit, and 
included within the range of the same merciful 
invitations of the gospel. Thoughts, feelings, 
joys, sorrows, aspirations, hopes, fears, and con- 



CONCLUSION. 215 

flicts, were common to them all, and are to us 
in common with them, as partakers of one nature 
as children of Adam. *' One touch of pity makes 
the whole world kin ;" and it is also interesting 
to reflect, that into a higher sphere of sympathy 
many of them entered ; and it is hoped that many 
a reader of these pages has ascended into it too 
— that sphere of sympathy, created by the influ- 
ence of the gospel on human minds, through 
the renewing power of the Spirit of God ; that 
realm of spiritual thought, emotion, and action, 
into which Christ gathers regenerated souls, and 
constitutes them a commonwealth, and a king- 
dom that knows not the mutations of this world, 
being under the constant and all-pervading pro- 
tection of an omnipotent Ruler. 

Generation, then, is not severed from genera- 
tion, but all men are of one family, and hence the 
deep foundations of that interest which we feel 
in the study of history. Without a mental and 
moral identity of race, the past annals of the 
world would be no more than the annals of 
another planet. But Christians in succeeding 
ages are linked to each other by indissoluble 
ties, as the spiritual seed in whom, by virtue of 
their oneness with Christ, the nations of the 
earth shall be blessed ; and hence the basis of 
that feeling of brotherhood with all departed 



216 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

saints, which rises with such subUme impulses 
within the soul of the Christian student, as he 
looks over the far-stretching path of bygone 
time. As men, we can embrace mankind; as 
Christians, we can embrace the true Church, 
conscious of the possession of elements of iden- 
tity which survive all change. While manners, 
customs, arts, governments, pass away^ the na- 
ture of man, and the new creation superinduced 
by grace, remain the same, like the deep, calm 
river which flows through London, the witness 
of a thousand changes, but unchanged itself. 

ISTor are the events of the past unconnected 
with each other, and wantmg in influence, as 
it regards the association of the earlier and the 
later. If it be true that " the child is father to 
the man ;" that the character formed in boyhood 
shapes the after life ; that all our subsequent 
course is aff'ected by our early training ; so it 
is also true that in the case of the society, as well 
as individuals, its history is connected through- 
out. What goes before influences what follows ; 
and the infant state and the infant city is really 
parent to that old and mature one into which, 
during the lapse of time, it grows. Philosophers 
tell us that no changes occur in nature without 
producing efi*ects ever perpetuated ; that aerial 
impulses, unseen by the keenest eye, unheard 



CONCLUSION. 217 

by the acutest ear, unperceived by human 
senses, are yet demonstrated to have an en- 
during existence ; so that the world of nature 
at this hour would not be what it is, had it not 
been for what it was in all past times. The 
present is a reservoir gathering up all the past. 
In like manner it is with regard to modern so- 
ciety and modern London. Nothing has taken 
place in its history but has in some way affected 
it permanently ; we are feeling now the effect 
of what occurred centuries ago. London could 
not be the place it is, had it not been the place 
it was. London owes its parentage, and much 
of its character, to the Tudor, the Plantagenet, 
the Norman, the Saxon, the Roman London ; 
the first of which was, properly, young London. 
There was the child which has proved father 
to the man — to the huge, gigantic, wealthy me- 
tropolitan city of the nineteenth century. 

Moral influences, calculated to purify and 
elevate the mind, may be derived from such 
historical studies as we have just pursued. Not 
only does the simple act of looking back over 
the gulf of past years detach us from the 
dominion of the senses, and thus, under right 
direction, serve to spiritualize our minds to some 
extent ; but further, the history of the ancient 
capital of England, by the legends of moral and 



218 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

religious beauty with whicli it is so greatly en- 
riched, becomes monitory of lessons more pre- 
cious than gold and silver. History throws 
round spots famihar to us every day, associations 
which touch them with a holy power, and take 
them out of the circle of common things. St. 
Paul's Churchyard, for example, and Smithfield, 
are fraught with ennobling reminiscences. We 
love to think of Henry Monmouth, the alderman 
who befriended Tyndale, our great translator of 
the Scriptures ; we love to think of the people 
who gathered round the old cross, and there 
caught the fire and inspiration of the reformed 
faith ; we love to think of those who crowded 
to hear the Bible readings, and when the book 
was proscribed, secreted it in then' dwellings, 
and read it at the risk of liberty and Hfe ; we 
love to think of those who stood and saw the 
Bible-burnings, and heard the proud anathemas 
against the study of heaven's own records, and 
still went on reading its pages, and drinking in 
its consolations — 

" Fierce, whisker'd guards that volume sought in vain, 
Enjoyed by stealth, and hid with anxious pain ; 
While all sj-'^und was misery and gloom, 
This show'd the boundless bliss beyond the tomb. 
Freed from the venal priest, the feudal rod, 
It led the weary sufferer's steps to God ; 
And when his painful course on earth was run, 
This, his chief wealth, descended to his son." 



CONCLUSION. 219 

We love to think of those who had piety and 
courage sufficient to brave the horrors of Lol- 
lard's Tower, and other dark dungeons, and 
whose faith and firmness enabled them to tri- 
umph over the last fiery trial ; we love to see 
them, while multitudes look upon the painful 
scene, — some mocking the sufierers, some awe- 
struck at their constancy, some strangely turned 
by a touch of sympathy at the sight of so much 
agony and heroism, — lift up their placid coun- 
tenances and hope-beaming eyes to the heaven 
of liberty and love, whose opening portals invite 
them to enter. 

These associations with London in the Olden 
Time are among our most precious recollections, 
and it would be better that all the wealth and 
commerce of that great city should perish, than 
that these recollections should die. " No mate- 
rial interest, no common welfare, can so bind 
a community together, and make it strong of 
heart, as a history of rights maintained, and 
virtues uncorrupted, and freedom won ; and one 
legend of conscience is worth more to a country 
than hidden gold and fertile plains." 

We cannot close our present review of Lon- 
don in the Olden Time without being forcibly 
reminded of the reality and permanence of the 



220 LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

spiritual world, and of the indissoluble relations 
which we sustain to it, as partakers of a moral 
and immortal nature, in contrast with the transi- 
toriness of those objects of pursuit, and the 
fleeting character of those hopes and fears, joys 
and sorrows, which, for the most part, form the 
materials of this brief history. "The things 
which are seen are temporal ; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal.*' Beyond the 
visible sphere which the eye of the merely secu- 
lar historian contemplates, there he regions of 
infinite extent, worlds of unending duration, 
states of perfect bliss or irretrievable ruin. 
Thither are the souls of men, amidst all the 
bustle of their daily avocations, and the enchant- 
ment of their present pleasures, hastening on- 
ward with inconceivable rapidity. It is perfectly 
overwhelming, as we walk the streets of a 
crowded city like London, to remember that 
the stream of wayfarers is composed of beings, 
each of whom is to exist forever ; to remember, 
that of all the teeming multitudes that have 
thronged the streets in years and ages gone by, 
not one has passed out of being ; that all who 
shall succeed us will equally have an eternal 
existence. The imdying spirit within us craves 
a possession such as earth has never yielded. 
All the prizes of worldly ambition; wealth, 



CONCLUSION. 221 

power, and fame, sink into insignificance when 
looked at in the light of the infinite future seen 
by the eye of faith. The need of the soul can 
only be supplied from the gospel of the Son of 
God; and by a true faith in him the supply 
will assuredly be received. Through the re- 
newing and purifying efiicacy of the Spirit of 
God, a preparation for the everlasting enjoy- 
ment of the heavenly inheritance may be infal- 
libly secured ; and thrice happy will it be for 
every reader, while he well fills up the duties 
of his earthly citizenship, to remember that here 
he has ''no continuing city," and to seek one 
that is to come, even '' a city which hath foun- 
dations, whose builder and maker is God." 



THE END. 



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